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SCHOOLBOY LIFE IN ENGLAND. [Out of print.] 

AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD. Illustrated, i 2 mo, $1.50 
rut. Postage 13 cents. 

WHICH COLLEGE FOR THE BOY? Illustrated, 
crown 8vo, $ 1.50 net. Postage extra. 

HUSBAND AND THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS, urao, 
$1.25 net. Postage extra. 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
Boston and New York 



HUSBAND 

and 
THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 



HUSBAND 

and 

THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

BY 

JOHN CORBIN 

AUTHOR OF "THE CAVE MAN," "THE FIRST 

LOVES OF PERILLA," "AN AMERICAN 

AT OXFORD," ETC. 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(Cfoe fttoerisibe $re?£ Cambriboe 

1910 



cl 



©lA 



COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY JOHN CORBIN 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published November iqio 



CCI.D 22531 



0s. 






WIFE 

A PREFACE 



WIFE 

A PREFACE 

When a very wise play-broker read the comedy 
which is published in the following pages, she paid 
it the compliments due to the occasion and then 
exclaimed : " BUT — where shall we ever find a 
manager daring enough to produce a play on such 
a theme?" The fact which would put managerial 
daring to rout was that, as the play-broker as- 
sumed, the theme was obnoxious to women. Not 
that it was immoral, or in any way improperly sug- 
gestive. That would have been a minor obstacle, 
as is well known to all observers of the mod- 
ern feminine mood. The heavily capitalized "but" 
referred to the fact — or rather to the broker's 
assumption — that the play presents the American 
woman in an unfavorable light. " It may be real," 
she added ; " but it is not what the managers and 
the public want to think is real. You see, the wave 
of popularity is on the constructive and optimistic 
side." 

If the theme of the play were quite what the 



viii WIFE 

broker assumed, the conclusion is too obvious to 
be called wisdom. It is axiomatic. Not only in 
drama, but in all of the arts, the final arbiter in the 
American world is woman. And for some reason — 
a brave man once said it is because of a defective 
sense of humor and an imperfectly detached intel- 
ligence — women do not enjoy contemplating 
themselves in an unfavorable light. To ask them 
to do so, even for the brief space of a dramatic 
representation, is to them cruelly destructive, bru- 
tally pessimistic. 

The comedy in question, as it happened, belied 
the broker's prediction. The first manager who 
read it agreed on the spot to produce it ; and the 
first actress to make the acquaintance of Clorinda 
Wayne paid an advance for the right to imper- 
sonate her — a percentage of which, to my sorrow, 
fell to the play-broker. But after all, an axiom is 
an axiom. 

The first man of the theatre to enunciate this 
one was Bottom the Weaver. And I have double 
cause to hearken to him now, for both of the plays 
I am publishing present the American woman in 
a light different from that which she herself would 
perhaps have chosen. Let me not fright the ladies 



WIFE ix 

out of their wits ! I will roar them as gently as any- 
sucking dove ; I will roar them, an 't were any 
nightingale. I have even aggravated the titles of 
the plays, so that, if nobody tells on me, the first 
will seem to be about American men, and the sec- 
ond about American children. 

And I am not insensible, I hope, of the just 
claims of our wives and sisters. The ideal of my 
adolescence took form from the Gibson girl, so 
chastely sculpturesque, even though a little out of 
drawing. My young man's fancy kindled to the 
flush radiance of the heroines of Mr. Harrison 
Fisher, limned in all the effulgence of the color 
printing-press. And these were only the outward 
and visible signs. It was a new ideal that we all 
worshiped — a rare spiritual light until then un- 
dreamed of. Inwardly as outwardly, the American 
girl was the paragon of the nations. As boys we 
had had no such illusion ; vague fears mingled 
with our misty loves, contempt with our adoration. 
But as young men we saw a new light. Male and 
female were no longer the dearest foes. In every 
atom of body and soul they were one. The duel 
of the sexes was obsolete ; the union of the future 
was a comradeship. 



x WIFE 

Even more fervently than we, young women 
have followed this new light. There is no mannish 
activity to which they have not aspired — or con- 
descended. As the modern athletic movement has 
brought us sport after sport, they have gone in for 
each with an ardor that fell short of no detail in 
the appropriate costume. Yet they have not been 
able to raise us men to an enduring basis of com- 
radeship in athletics. It would be hard to tell the 
reason ; but the melancholy fact is that as sport 
after sport has swept over the land, each in sub- 
siding has left its women-adherents for the most 
part on the club veranda, taking tea in furbelows 
and despair, while the men are out in the open, 
crudely sweating and rejoicing in abandoned dis- 
array. 

Then women learned to talk of the stock market 
or the wheat-pit, of national politics and of maga- 
zine exposures, and with a brilliancy amazingly 
unhampered by a very natural lack of information. 
Sad to relate, the man seldom responds in kind. 
Heaven knows how our society manages to be 
even as intellectual as it is! His obtuseness is 
generally laid to the fact that he is the tired busi- 
ness man. He is. But if he tells the truth as to his 



WIFE xi 

social lassitude — and why should he ? — it is n't his 
business that makes him tired. 

His failure to rise to the high estate of comrade- 
ship has left our women-folk in a position of tragic 
isolation. They are far beyond the humble conso- 
lations of the " three C's," which the Kaiser of late 
recommended as a salve to the feminine Zeitgeist 
— church, cooking, and children. They even pulled 
a wry face when a recent President commended 
one of this outmoded trinity. The American woman 
is in the position of a goddess who has been raised 
to a pedestal and then deserted by those who have 
raised her. It is impossible not to look down 
upon the world ; yet what satisfaction is there in 
looking down, if the world goes on about its busi- 
ness unheeding ? In " Man and Superman " the 
Statue of the Commander, having come off his 
pedestal, walks lightly and with a graceful sense 
of relief among quite common mortals ; but the 
Commander was a man, and Mr. Shaw has a sense 
of humor. 

We have been speaking of the American woman 
as we all delight to conceive her — of the woman 
of education and leisure ; but in wage-earning 
also — as mill-hands, shop-girls, and typewriters — 



xii WIFE 

women have, so to speak, claimed comradeship. 
These women are on the whole quite as beautiful, 
and dress in quite the same styles — though their 
charms are unblazoned on magazine covers. They 
are even more independent, for they largely feed 
and clothe themselves ; and they have precisely the 
same attitude of equality with their commoner 
men-folk — of equality tinged with a tragic supe- 
riority. 

Statistics tell of their vast and increasing num- 
bers, and the national mind is much troubled on 
their account. But statistics add a fact which has 
received far less attention : the average age of 
wage-earning women is only twenty-two. Of mid- 
dle-aged women there are thousands, but of girls, 
even children, there are tens of thousands. No doubt 
industrial women are a permanent phenomenon, 
and an increasing phenomenon — though not, as 
Dr. Edith Abbott has discovered, increasing rela- 
tively to men. But as individual wage-earners they 
are transients merely. 

This is due in part, perhaps, to the well-estab- 
lished fact that as a rule they have less productive 
ability. Yet this is not always so. In occupations 
requiring neatness, accuracy, and skill they are 



WIFE xiii 

often superior. Nor are they transients because 
men brutally drive them forth. Men have seldom 
or never forced women to take less pay for the same 
work ; for, as Mr. Sidney Webb has pointed out, 
the entire history of industry shows only a few 
rare cases in which men and women have done 
precisely similar work in the same place and at 
the same epoch. Where the sexes clash, women 
drive out men. Men simply cannot stand the com- 
petition. 

For in some respects men are feeble to a point 
which it is not easy to discriminate from imbe- 
cility. Hard as it is in the struggle of life for any 
one to take care of himself, they are always casting 
about for the privilege (as it seems to them) of pay- 
ing the bills of some one else — curiously enough, 
almost always a woman. And before a poor devil 
has become well inured to his new responsibility, 
he rubs his eyes to find that there are other mouths 
to feed, other backs to clothe. Yet this extraordi- 
nary dupe goes ahead and does it, uncomplaining. 
More than that ! life is not worth living to him un- 
less he can afford to act in this manner. Women, 
with their superior intelligence, are quite satisfied 
to work only for themselves. They have, in fact, 



xiv WIFE 

an extraordinary capacity for making others work 
for them. Under a competitive system, however, 
this enlightened policy has one drawback. Such 
is the insanity of men, that to take care of others 
they will work harder and better than women will 
work for themselves. And that is the great reason 
— perhaps the only reason — why women are paid 
less than men. Their own dispositions limit them 
to kinds of work that are worth less. In the indus- 
trial duel of the sexes they have mastered many 
fields — but each field shrinks as they master it. 

It is not this, however, which makes women 
transients in wage-earning. A prominent merchant 
once put the case very tersely. He had long em- 
ployed women as responsible stenographers and 
secretaries, but had lately begun filling their places 
with men, though at greatly increased salaries. 
One reason for doing so, he said, was that women 
are less stable physically, and that when their dis- 
ability occurs in a crisis of rush work the result is 
disastrous — as disastrous to the welfare of the 
woman as to that of the business. His second rea- 
son was perhaps more momentous. He had found, 
he said, that he could not count on women perma- 
nently. To train them up to a responsible post 



WIFE xv 

required several years; and it usually happened 
that, as soon as they had mastered it, they fell ill 
or retired to private life. 

Thus in business as elsewhere women have 
failed to make good the claim of equality. They 
backslide in one of three ways — premature death, 
somewhat belated marriage, or the eternal streets. 
The difference of sex asserts itself and upsets the 
advanced, the enlightened order. 

Even in the matter of actual numbers we have 
perhaps exaggerated the importance of women 
in industry. It is highly probable that in the 
economic life of the world as a whole they are 
a less important factor than in any preceding 
age. I am aware that to the feminist mind this 
will seem a false statement, or at best an untena- 
ble paradox ; but let us look at the recognized 
facts. 1 

It was the invention of machinery that brought 
women into the ranks of wage-earners. In the 
preceding age, and for thousands of years before 
it, back to the beginnings of civilization, most 

1 The following paragraph was written before the publication 
of Dr. Edith Abbott's Women in Industry, which, however, 
substantiates every statement in it. 



xvi WIFE 

industries were household industries — they were, 
in fact, the invention of the aboriginal mistress of 
the household. Women baked and brewed, spun, 
wove, sewed, and mended ; they brought up large 
families with their own hands, formed the man- 
ners of their children, and informed their minds. 
Machinery — the factory and the railway — 
changed all this. By cheapening commodities, it 
put an end forever to almost all of the household 
industries. At the same time it created the female 
wage-earner. Thrown out of work at home, ren- 
dered idle and no longer self-supporting, women 
of necessity flocked to the shop and the fac- 
tory. But as machinery cheapened commodities it 
lessened the labor, and the number of laborers, 
necessary to their production. And even of this 
labor much is performed by men. Thus, speaking 
roughly, in proportion as the number of women 
wage-earners has increased, the importance of 
women in the sum total of human industry has 
diminished. 

I have no wish to minimize the wrongs of the 
working-woman. As individuals they are still sub- 
ject to much injustice. What is more, as potential 
mothers of a new generation the prevailing system 



WIFE xvii 

often treats them brutally, suicidally. And I do 
not, I think, undervalue the recent womanly ad- 
vance in any respect. The athletic woman and the 
woman who concerns herself with public affairs, 
either as a reader of magazines or as an actual 
worker, is a clear improvement upon the woman 
of old whose activity and intelligence were limited 
to the household. Yet I think it fairly demon- 
strable that we have all been inclined to miscon- 
ceive the present woman-problem. The one great 
disease of modern life is not the woman in indus- 
try ; it is the idle woman. 

Until the present era, only the aristocratic few 
stood outside the workaday world. To-day, 
throughout what is sometimes called the middle 
classes, women have no real work. Their meals 
are cooked for them, their clothing made for them. 
In cases of sickness they employ a trained nurse. 
Often they have tutors and governesses for their 
children, and afterward they send their boys and 
girls away from home to school. What has hap- 
pened is what always happens when any human 
being or any class loses touch with the vital affairs 
of life : superficially more vivacious, more charm- 
ing, more varied than ever before, our women 



xviii WIFE 

have become, in all the essentials of character, 
futile, shallow, and vain. 

It is, to be sure, only industrially — as produc- 
tive units — that modern women are idle. If the 
mere doing- of things is labor, heaven knows they 
have work enough ! As if aware of the unnatural 
emptiness of their lives, they are casting about for 
something to occupy them in a thousand direc- 
tions. 

For some subtle reason that something, as a 
rule, has hitherto belonged only to men. Is it pos- 
sible that the paragon of the nations in her heart 
of hearts respects nothing so much as her humble 
consort ? Certainly we have received the flattery of 
imitation. There have been women lawyers, doc- 
tors, and priests ; women painters and sculptors. 
Mentally these women have no doubt been the 
equals of men — at least, as Professor Angell has 
shown, they respond as favorably to the laboratory 
tests of physiological psychology. Yet after a gen- 
eration of eager striving, the only field in which 
women have really shone is the field in which they 
have always shone, because it gives scope to the 
emotional and social qualities of their sex — the 
novel of manners. 



WIFE xix 

The failure cannot be laid to mere male preju- 
dice. Women themselves do not employ women 
lawyers and doctors. And though women are the 
chief patrons of the arts, they do not differ from 
men in their judgments as to their sisters who are 
artists. 

The idea still persists, however, and is appar- 
ently gaining ground, that the sexes are, or should 
be, alike in activity and function. An orator ad- 
dressing a Chicago woman's club lately proposed 
that, as we have mothers' clubs and mothers' mag- 
azines, we should have also fathers' clubs and 
fathers' magazines. The idea commends itself to 
the meanest intelligence. Sauce for the goose is 
also sauce for the gander. 

An idea which is essentially the same has com- 
mended itself to intelligences which are far from 
mean. Whatever is goose-like in the feminine 
mind — or shall we say gallinaceous? — is ex- 
plained by an appeal to history as resulting from 
the brutal suppression which, it is alleged, women 
have always suffered at the hands of the mus- 
cularly superior sex. Thus it will take time for 
woman to recover her pristine equality. One of 
the cleverest of the advancing women has written 



xx WIFE 

a poem to point the way back to nature. It begins 

thus : — 

The female fox she is a fox, 
The female horse a horse. 

The rest of the poem escapes my memory ; but 
the sense is that the female fox is as crafty as Rey- 
nard, the female horse even swifter than Bucepha- 
lus. Maud S. and Nancy Hanks are the heroines 
this poet sings. And woman, when she comes into 
her own, will be a superior female man. 

Such reasoning, to say the least, is not univer- 
sally true to human experience. Hercules had his 
Omphale, Samson his Delilah ; and the merely 
industrial male, as we have seen, has not greatly 
profited by their example. If man has crushed 
woman down, which I am far from admitting, it is 
manifest that he has also idealized her, exalted 
her. Through the darkest of dark ages the one 
shrine of human adoration held a woman. Our 
poet's reasoning in fact is only speciously scientific. 
It leaves quite out of account the one science in 
which all questions of sex have their origin — 
biology. 

And here we shall have to plod in the lowly 
path of platitude. Sex is an evolution. In the earli- 



WIFE xxi 

est forms of life it did not exist ; and as life has 
ascended, the difference between the sexes has 
become more and more pronounced. Now a chief 
means in the ascent of life everywhere is special- 
ization. The functions of the primitive medicine 
man are to-day divided between the priest and 
the doctor, each of whom further specializes as 
preacher or social worker, as physician or surgeon, 
as oculist, aurist, dentist. The patriarchal house- 
hold has expanded by specialization into our in- 
comparably complex social and economic order. 
In biology the process has been the same. All the 
complex organs of the human anatomy developed 
by specialization from a single cell. In a precisely 
similar manner sex also is a specialization. In the 
unstable life of the lower animals, exposed on all 
sides to danger of annihilation, the female has to 
be as cunning and as swift as the male, who is 
quite powerless to protect her or her young. But 
in human society the male has achieved the func- 
tion of providing and protecting, while the female 
has achieved a specialized capacity for mother- 
hood which, at its best, is unapproached in all 
animate life. Sex equality is unknown to nature : it 
is against nature. Messrs. Geddes and Thompson, 



xxii WIFE 

in their work on the Evolution of Sex, remark in 
an impatient footnote that what was foreordained 
among the protozoans cannot be changed by act 
of Parliament. 

I once had the honor of repeating this sentence 
to a distinguished English woman disseminating 
new thoughts among us. The idea that women 
should be like men, she retorted, was quite out of 
date. She and her militant allies would never think 
of wearing pot hats, choker collars, and trousers I 
"When I was put in jail," she concluded, "I 
wore a crepe de chine frock of the latest mode, 
and" — with a gesture about her head which the 
limited masculine intelligence could never trans- 
late — " a hat that went so, and so." And thus was 
the doctrine of feminine equality reconciled with 
biology. 

The ideas of the modern woman, like her activi- 
ties, result not so much from an advance in thought 
as from a change in industrial conditions. Hav- 
ing little or no functional part in the world as it is 
now constituted, she has, obeying a very human 
instinct, produced from her inner consciousness 
a new order which is to give her a place of recog- 
nized importance. But even as this new order flies 



WIFE xxiii 

in the face of evolution, it is at war with her deepest 
and most permanent impulses. 

Never before, I submit, has there been a more 
interesting subject for dramatic representation. 
And it has quite eluded the dramatist. In the light 
of it the women of Ibsen seem already to belong 
to a past generation. 

The ideals against which they revolted were 
essentially those of the era of household indus- 
tries ; for, as so often happens, they had long sur- 
vived the conditions that gave rise to them. In the 
old age, " woman's work was never done," and the 
place for her body and her mind was not unnatu- 
rally held to be the place where her work was. To 
attempt an individual life outside the home was, 
and not without reason, held to be unjustifiable — 
" unwomanly " if not positively immoral. When 
women married they had a home and children of 
their own ; if they did not marry, they became lit- 
erally "spinsters" in the industrial households of 
others. But as soon as the home ceased to afford 
wives or spinsters their normal activities and im- 
portance, it became a doll's house : to limit their 
lives to its four walls was the height of tyranny. 
The situation was of a kind to appeal strongly to 



xxiv WIFE 

Ibsen; and so we have Nora and the revolted 
woman in general. 

I do not mean that Ibsen had thought out the 
situation in the terms of economic history, or of 
biology ; indeed, we know that he had not done 
so. He had the keenest of eyes for character in 
dramatic situations ; but his thought was limited 
to the terms of the drama of the individual. His 
mind worked not by causation, analysis, construc- 
tion, but by broad comparisons and contrasts. In 
" An Enemy of the People " he portrayed the ideal 
of manly heroism ; and then in " The Wild Duck " 
he gave us its travesty. When he had given us 
Nora, who abandoned home, husband, and children 
in the heroic will to realize her true womanhood, 
he felt that not all womanly revolt is justifiable ; 
and in this new mood he gave us Hedda Gabler, 
whose feminine ambitions turned everything they 
touched to the sordid and the mean. But whether 
positive or negative, Ibsen's characters are unre- 
lated to the social order. Nora's children bound her 
as little to her home or to the destiny of the race as 
Hedda's unborn child. 

Ibsen had, in short, no mind for abstract ideas 
or for systems. He had no interest in " philosophy 



WIFE xxv 

as such" ; and he expressed his contempt for eco- 
nomic thought with characteristic brusqueness. 
He remarked that he was quite able to believe 
John Stuart Mill when he said that he " got all his 
ideas from his wife." The vast new revelations of 
biology had no deep meaning for him ; and in the 
progress of human history — so sure and majestic, 
if often slow and halting — he saw only "a gigan- 
tic shipwreck," with not enough lumber left from 
it all to make a state worth living in. " The State 
crushes Individuality," he cried ; "away with the 
State!" 

It is not strange that he failed to enlighten us 
as to the ultimate fate of the revolted woman, of 
her coming relationship to social and economic 
development. But since he failed to do so, his 
Nora already "dates" ; she is as clearly mid- Vic- 
torian as black walnut and haircloth. 

To-day the world is full of outmoded Noras, 
still seeking, absurdly, heroically, pathetically, the 
"miracle" which shall restore them to their birth- 
right of an economic status and a vital function. 
And Hedda Gablers are not unknown. The great, 
the insistent question of the time is what on earth 
to do with such women. When the world is ridden 



xxvi WIFE 

by a dead ideal it needs heroic individuals to set 
it free ; but such freedom is sheer anarchy unless 
it leads to a new ideal — an ideal which coordi- 
nates the welfare of the individual with the welfare 
of the community as an organized whole. As the 
work of Ibsen's generation was dark and destruc- 
tive, ours is — pace my play-broker — constructive. 
Along certain lines the way is clear enough, and 
is already well-trodden. Social life, which now 
spreads far out beyond the portals of the home, is 
very generally, though perhaps not very rapidly, 
advancing in refinement and intelligence. The 
popular arts are, as my play-broker so clearly re- 
cognizes, still largely dominated by the ancient 
feminine vanity and sentimentality ; yet personally 
I feel optimistic — as well as constructive. If ever 
I should be moved to portray women with the 
pen of satire, I should do so, in the firm belief that 
they have achieved a sense of humor and a de- 
tached intelligence. The gallinaceous club woman 
is obsolescent and may some day be extinct, like 
the dodo. In well-managed clubs and civic organ- 
izations women are exerting a very powerful influ- 
ence on the social order. All this work is produc- 
tive, though remotely and indirectly so. 



WIFE xxvii 

In one field the labor of women is immediately 
and directly productive. It is a field in which they 
are forever the only laborers ; and it is the most 
vital, most significant field of all. Here, alas ! it 
can hardly be said that they are advancing. " There 
is no wealth but life," wrote Ruskin ; and the doc- 
trine, neglected in his own time, has lately been 
taken as entitling him to rank as the founder of 
the only real and vital economics. "A nation," 
says Tille, " is composed not of property or of 
provinces, but of men." " The culture of the racial 
life," says Saleeby, " is the vital industry of any 
people " ; and he advocates it as the basis of the 
patriotism of the future, whether socialistic or in- 
dividualistic, peaceful or imperial. 

How women are performing this, their exclu- 
sive industrial function, is well known. In France 
population as a whole is declining in numbers ; in 
England, America, and Germany the rate of ad- 
vance is becoming rapidly less. Among the well- 
born and well-bred everywhere — the aristocracy 
of biology — it is stationary or actually receding. 
Cut off by the industrial revolution from one form 
of their ancient productivity, women are cutting 
themselves off from the other in obedience to their 



xxviii WIFE 

own idle selfishness, or at best their ignorant and 
false ideals. 

The theory upon which all these ideals ulti- 
mately rest is that sex is "an accident," and as 
such a let and hindrance to the life of the individual. 
Down with all the old ideals of motherhood ! Mr. 
Bernard Shaw, in whom the vital if incomplete 
thought of Ibsen has fallen into a late Victorian 
decadence, and so itself already " dates," blandly 
proposes that children shall be rapt from their 
mothers and fathers at birth and turned over to the 
incubator of a socialistic state. " What we need is 
freedom for people who have never seen each other 
before, and never intend to see one another again, 
to produce children under certain definite public 
conditions without loss of honor." The fatherland 
is to become also the motherland — or rather an 
asexual institution which shall perform the dual 
function. 

Of all the functions which the state performs 
badly, it would perform the function of motherhood 
worst. But the appalling feature of this remark- 
able statement is its ignorance of biology. If sex is 
an accident, so is evolution. Sex is the one great 
instrument of the increasing purpose of the ages. 



WIFE xxix 

Talk of comradeship and equality, with the logical 
corollary of race culture by public creche, is mere 
cackle — though to say so is to wrong the esti- 
mable gallinacean, who is by no means respon- 
sible for the introduction into the barnyard of state 
socialism in the form of an incubator. 

Abhorrent as the idea may be to the Ibsen girl 
— whether mid- Victorian or late-Victorian, whether 
clothed in black crepe de chine or in a red beard 
and trousers — the one sure salvation for the hectic 
and futile modern woman is a heightened sexual 
life, both in the bearing and the rearing of children. 
The normal energies of men are creative ; but what 
they create is dead — constitutions, institutions, 
works of invention and of art. The normal energies 
of women are procreative ; and what they pro- 
create is alive — the men and women of the future, 
who shall give vigor and effect to constitutions and 
institutions, who shall transmute invention and art 
into terms of vital reality. The one great thing to 
be desired for the modern woman, as regards her 
individual character, is essential womanhood. The 
woman of the future will glory in her different 
nature; and when she does so, men will at once 
fear her and adore her. 



xxx WIFE 

To-day we recruit the future mainly from the 
lower ranges of our life — the ill-begotten, uned- 
ucated, ill-bred children of diseased or embruted 
parents. The horse-racer and the stock-farmer 
know better. Not so the potential mother of the 
human thoroughbred. It is better, she says, to give 
one child all possible advantages than to scant the 
nurture and education of many. This is certainly 
better for the parents, if what they care for is per- 
sonal ease and social distinction. But the case is 
far different if what they care for is the future of the 
race and of mankind. 

To get the one plant necessary to improve a 
stock, Luther Burbank raises seedlings by hun- 
dreds of thousands. It is not soil or culture that 
produces the all-precious individual, but some un- 
fathomable influence which can be developed only 
by working blindly in numbers. Benjamin Frank- 
lin was the youngest of seventeen children, no one 
of whom, except for him, would now be remem- 
bered. But if he had not been born, the history of 
our country would have been vastly different and 
vastly less fortunate. Far and wide, biography of 
the brothers of men of genius is a study in esti- 
mable mediocrity. 



WIFE xxxi 

It need hardly be said that the problem of human 
eugenics is more difficult than that of the culture 
of plants and animals. We cannot mate young folk 
as we mate cattle, nor reject the unfit among chil- 
dren as among plants. And doubtless the ideal 
family biologically numbers far less than seventeen 
— probably less than seven. But within the limits 
imposed by science and by common sense we have 
choice, and the choice of the future will work 
toward breeding more largely from the vital aris- 
tocracy and less largely from the slums. 

It is in the creation of an ever-advancing race, 
and only in this way, that women can regain their 
normal productive function. And the ground is 
cleared for them to do so. Thanks to the glorious 
mid-Victorian revolt, the freedom of the world is 
theirs. They are able to earn their own living, and 
so to choose their mates with far greater wisdom 
than during the long ages in which their industry 
was limited to and dominated by the household. 
In a word, they have a wider field of sexual selec- 
tion. If, as sometimes happens, they are women 
such as Weininger describes, in whom the male 
character element predominates over the female, 
they are at liberty to live out their abnormal lives, 



xxxii WIFE 

not as lilies that wither in an idleness none too 
sweet, but as the modern equivalent of spinsters 
— as wage-earners, teachers, lawyers, doctors, and 
priests. Whether spinsters or matrons, their horizon 
includes a vastly enhanced social life — the whole 
world of art and of science, and as much of politi- 
cal activity as in the long run they prove able 
to perform with profit. But to the normal woman, 
the aristocrat of biology, this free new life is of 
importance merely as it enlarges her nature and 
so perfects her in the function which women alone 
can perform, and which is the greatest of all func- 
tions, as life is greater than art, greater than insti- 
tutions. 

The plays that follow deal with two women 
whose lives are swayed by the very plausible ideals 
which have of late been current among us. They 
are not, I hope, thesis-plays — to write which, I 
take it, is to be false at once to art and to polemics. 
They merely represent character in a significant 
crisis. And they do this so far as possible in the 
manner of the popular playwright. In themselves 
the two heroines are, I feel, essentially sweet and 
normal. Indeed, I should be glad to think that both 
have essential dignity, even nobility of a sort. Both 



WIFE xxxiii 

come at last to the realization of what lies very- 
deep in every woman's heart — the instinct of the 
race and of the future. One is passive and senti- 
mental, and her fate is tragic. The other is active, 
and is possessed of the kindly demon of humor. 
If they help to a sincerer respect for normal 
womanhood, they will not have lived their little 
mimic lives in vain. 



CONTENTS 

Wife 

A Preface v 

Husband 

A Comedy in Three Acts . i 

The Forbidden Guests 

A Tragedy in One Act 235 



HUSBAND 
3 Coimo? in Qfytte 3cc« 



IN MEMORY OF 

CLARA BLOODGOOD 

SINCERE ARTIST AND TRUE FRIEND 



PEOPLE IN THE PLAY 

Mrs. Anthony Herkimer Wayne 

Tony Wayne, her husband 

Lord Edmund Iffley 

Muriel Schuyler 

Philip Roberts 

Rebecca Levine, LL. B. 

Sally Jones 

Mary Jones {called Maysie) 

Mrs. Archer Denton 

Randall 



ACT I 

The Library of Wayne s House, near Madison Avenue 

ACT II 

Mrs. Wayne s Drawing-Room. Next Day 

ACT III 

The Roof of an Apartment House in Madison Avenue, 
Madison Square Tower in the distance. A week later 

New York. The Present 



ACT I 



ACT I 

Scene: — Wayne's Library. Typically a mans room, 
with wide, deep, easy chairs, simple, solid oak furni- 
ture generally, and dull, rich colors. The whole sug- 
gests inexpensive good taste and long use, verging 
upon shabbiness. The books are largely in legal calf 
bindings, and bear the appearance of having been 
much handled. There is a telephone at the desk, down 
right. Prominent among the pictures is an etching of 
the Harvard Yard. There are several large group 
photographs of athletic teams. Over the door at the 
right is a wide band of cloth, red at the ends and 
black in the central third, upon which are the letters 
in white, Anthony Herkimer Wayne. These are all 
former furnishings of a college room. There are no 
college pillows or colors. Outside the window is a 
yellozving locust tree, through which are dimly seen 
the backs of neighboring houses, warm with the light 
of a late Indian Summer afternoon. As the scene 
proceeds, twilight gathers and deepens into night. 

Discovered : — As the curtain rises, Wayne is at his 
desk, asleep, his head on his wrists, which are crossed 
above a mass of papers. His coat is on the floor be- 
side him. He is wearing a colored shirt and belt. 



io HUSBAND [act i 

{Enter Randall?) 

Randall 
The lady, sir, from the Legal Aid Society. 

Wayne 
( Waking wearily?) 
Who? 

Randall 
The Jewish lady from the East Side. She insisted — 

Wayne 

Show her up. 

{Exit Randall. Wayne drowses again?) 

{After a brief pause ', enter Miss Levine. She is of me- 
dium size, lithe, feline. Her hair is black, and her 
cheeks dark red and amber. She carries a copy of 
Town Topics, folded. At once aggressive and ill at 
ease in her present surroundings, she has walked 
ahead of the butler, and now, unaware of his inten- 
tion to announce her, she closes the door, shutting 
him out. Seeing Wayne asleep, she stands irresolute ; 
then she crosses swiftly and, picking up his coat, 
spreads it upon his shoulders, and turns to leave?) 



act i] HUSBAND ii 

Wayne 

(Waking.) 

I beg pardon ! 

{He rises, struggling with sleep. The coat falls un- 
heeded to the floor. His manner is modest and good- 
humored ; but his presence is commanding and gives 
the impression of strong will and unswerving pur- 
pose. He is a man for whom the surface values of 
life do not exist, but who feels deeply the more vital 
issues?) 

I've had no good sleep the past week. Cat-nap 
— to clear my wits before planning my speech 
this evening. You forgive me? 

Miss Levine 

Your campaign would n't tire you so. You 've 
been wearing yourself out at your law practice. 

Wayne 
Even a candidate has to live. 

Miss Levine 
Like Dr. Johnson, I don't see the necessity. 



12 HUSBAND [act i 

Wayne 
{Boyishly,) 
You 're always scolding me. It *s no fair. 

Miss Levine 
( With a touch of coquetry?) 
Always ? 

Wayne 

You scolded me into joining your Legal Aid So- 
ciety — 

Miss Levine 

It 's the best work of your lifetime — what you 've 
done for the law-ridden poor. That's only one 
scolding. 

Wayne 
You scolded me into politics. 

Miss Levine 

Yes. And now I 've come to scold you into victory ! 
Here you are, at the head of a popular movement 



act i] HUSBAND 13 

for decent government. Think what it means ! 
After years of graft and waste, of all that 's worst in 
our politics, you have it in your power — 

Wayne 

Not my power. The people — if enough of them 
rebel against the machines . . . 

Miss Levine 

That 's it — the machines ! You have no machine 
— only your own personality. You have magnet- 
ism — though heaven knows how, you sleepy boy ! 
A whirlwind finish, and all is ours. Yet you squan- 
der your strength in mere bread-winning ! 

Wayne 

(Changing the subject \ with boyish guile?) 

How 's that book of yours coming on — Socialism 
and the Family? 

Miss Levine 

As I told you the last time you asked, it has been 
refused by all the publishers. 



14 HUSBAND [act i 

Wayne 
( Sympathetically. ) 
The devil ! What excuse do they give ? 

Miss Levine 

( With deep irony.) 

One said socialists don't buy books, only talk 
them. People who buy books are respectable, and 
won't stand for free love. 

Wayne 

Isn't there something in that? I 've had it on my 
mind to scold you. Tell me about your child, Miss 
Levine. 

Miss Levine 

You 're very clever. But you shan't sidetrack me. 
In your private practice, which wears you out so, 
you are dickering over the marriage settlement of 
an American heiress. 

Wayne 
Lord Iffley has his attorney. I 'm acting for Mr. 



act i] HUSBAND 15 

Schuyler. It 's hideous folly. But where should we 
lawyers be if it were n't for fools ? 

Miss Levine 

The candidate of the people — mixing up in the 
follies of the aristocracy ! Or perhaps, with those 
colonial ancestors, you really are an aristocrat? 

Wayne 

(Laughing?) 

Both Herkimer and Mad Anthony were plain farm- 
ers and fought the British. 

Miss Levine 
Then your descent from them is a descent ! 

Wayne 

I 'm fighting the British, too. Lord Iffley is ambi- 
tious for a public career. You won't admit it, but 
that takes money. His lawyer insists that Mr. 
Schuyler shell out three millions. 

Miss Levine 
Yankee dollars — to make an English career. 



16 HUSBAND [act i 

Wayne 

I 'm putting a ramrod up the old man's back — ad- 
vising him to call off the whole, sordid affair. 

Miss Levine 

People don't know that ; you are losing votes by 
the thousand. 

Wayne 

(Suddenly serious?) 
Who told you so ? 

Miss Levine 

Ah, now you are interested / It 's I who tell you. 
Night after night in the cafes, I meet business 
men, editors and district leaders. The East Side 
is turning against you ! 

Wayne 

( With the manner of the practical politician?) 

That 's bad. They are the backbone of our cause, 
your people. 



act i] HUSBAND 17 

Miss Levine 

Throw up these private entanglements ! Get down 
to the issue, and you are in line to be governor, 
even President ! 

Wayne 

{Shrugging his shoulders?) 

When you talk like that, I believe in myself least. 
And by that time, if I neglect my practice, I shall 
be in the poorhouse, with those who depend on 
me. 

Miss Levine 

{Significantly?) 

Those who depend on you ! Was it your own 
choice that got you into this marriage mess ? Was 
it not your wife — her social ambition, her desire 
to have a finger in the pie of swelldom ? 

Wayne 

{Indulgently, but firmly?) 
Miss Levine ! 



18 HUSBAND [act i 

Miss Levine 

I can't understand you American men. When you 
stood forth boldly as an independent, both ma- 
chines tried to throw a laugh at you. In ten days 
you had thrown a fright into them. Both sneaked 
round and tried to get you on the regular tickets. 

Wayne 
{Smiling.) 
The bosses were most ingratiating — in private. 

Miss Levine 

Yet, having bossed the bosses, you are under the 
thumb of your wife 1 

Wayne 
( With mounting indignation^) 
Even if that were true, it would n't concern us now. 

Miss Levine 
You mean it 's none of my business ! But it is your 
business. 

{She takes the periodical from under her arm, opens it, 
and points to an article?) 



act i] HUSBAND 19 

Wayne 

{Glances at the opening paragraph. His eyebrows lower, 
and his face expresses indignation ; but he commands 
himself and, returning the paper, says in a tone of 
unconcern?) 

Back-stairs gossip. No one reads such stuff. I 
never heard of it till this moment. 

Miss Levine 

{Turning to the front page and pointing to the date?) 

The issue of next Saturday. To-morrow every 
paper on the East Side will be saying one thing : 
while you are professing in public to be the can- 
didate of the people, in private you are a parasite 
of swollen fortunes — bartering a girl of eighteen, 
body and soul, for an English title ! 

Wayne 
You are frightfully melodramatic. 

Miss Levine 

I may be melodramatic. You will be a joke — a 
marriage broker ! I can see the headlines — Wayne 
as Shadchen. 



20 HUSBAND [act i 

Wayne 
( With affected indifference?) 
An old and honorable profession — Shadchen. 

Miss Levine 

Meantime your wife is carrying on an affair with 
the noble bridegroom. 

Wayne 

( With a flash of anger,) 

Miss Levine ! I must ask you to leave me to my 
writing. 

(He crosses toward the door.) 

Miss Levine 
It 's not I who say this. It 's all here. 
(She points to the conclusion of the article?) 

Wayne 

(Glancing at the paper?) 
Blackguards ! 



act i] HUSBAND 21 

Miss Levine 

I have warned you. Unless you stamp out this 
scandal, it will ruin our cause. Now you may show 
me the door. 

Wayne 
{Regaining good nature?) 

I have n't time to be angry with my enemies — 
certainly not with my friends. 

{Kindly?) 

Tell me, how's your book on free love coming on? 

Miss Levine 
( Sardonically?) 

Nothing has happened since I told you, just now, 
that all the publishers have refused it. 

( With a touch of anger?) 

Why do you pretend interest in me ? 

Wayne 
I am interested, Miss Levine, really. 
{As if correcting a false start?) 
Tell me about your child. 



22 HUSBAND [act i 

Miss Levine 

That at least is published. You take the moral 
attitude ! 

Wayne 

If it 's the moral attitude to be deeply interested. 
Yours is the only case I have ever known of — of 
the new marriage. 

Miss Levine 
That man — I'm well rid of him. 

Wayne 

I was thinking of your child. Has he no need of 
a home ? 

Miss Levine 

At least I have a child. Your American women, 
correct and sexless . . . 

{Enter Mrs. Wayne. She is typically an American 
girl, regular and distinguished in features, frank 
and bright in manner, with a pronounced air of one 
used to having her own way. Her dress, which is in 
exquisite good taste, contrasts strongly with Miss 



act i] HUSBAND 23 

Levities work-a-day simplicity. Randall follows 
with a bridge table covered with cards. Miss Levine, 
ill at ease y draws back toward the wall near the 
door.) 

Wayne 

You can't come in here. 

{To Randall.) 

Take that thing away ! 

{Randall hesitates as if questioning the order y then 
goes out with the bridge table.) 

Clora 
( Who has not noticed Miss Levine.) 

Miss Schuyler has telephoned she's coming. 
Heaven knows why she should ; but in another 
minute she '11 ring. We 've only one game more 
— twelve and a half cents a point! I 'm winning 
and can hardly stop. 

Wayne 

Miss Schuyler will sit by till you 've finished. I 
have only twenty minutes to sketch my speech. 



24 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 
But Lord Iffley is with us ! 

Wayne 

{Significantly?) 
Oh! 

Clora 

If Miss Schuyler found him here! Things have 
happened . . . 

Wayne 
{Significantly?) 
They have. 

Miss Levine 
( Coming forward. ) 

Good day, Mr. Wayne. Good luck to your speech. 
(Incisively.) 
And to your career as boss of the bosses. 

(Mrs. Wayne greets her pleasantly, but she bows dis- 
tantly and goes out, conducted by Randall.) 



act i] HUSBAND 25 

Clora 

(Firmly.) 

There 's not another room in the house. It 's only 
Alice Denton and Philip. 

Wayne 

You have Philip to meet Lord Iffley ? You know 
Philip has always cared for Miss Schuyler. 

Clora 

Philip just happened. He 's a good sportsman and 
sat in to make a game. 

(Laying her hands on his shoulders and her cheek 
against his } yet still firmly .) 

Put on your coat, Tony. 

Wayne 

(Decisively.) 

No ! I won't be interrupted. This time I '11 have 
my own way. 

Clora 
But where shall we go ? 



26 HUSBAND [act i 

Wayne 

(In a commanding tone, though good-humored.} 
Go to the devil ! Only shut that door. 

Clora 

The dinner table is being set. The seamstress is 
in our room. If you will live in a house as big as 
your pocket ! 

Wayne 
Shut that door ! 

Clora 
{Falling back before his vehemence toward the door.) 
We won't disturb you. Bridge is whist, you know. 

Wayne 
SHUT THAT DOOR ! 

Clora 
Hush ! They are just outside and have heard you ! 
{The doorbell rings.) 
Miss Schuyler, already ! 



ACT I] 



HUSBAND 



Wayne 



27 



( Good-humored^) 
Oh, well. 
(Calling out.) 
Come in everybody ! 

{Enter Mrs. Denton and Sally , and after them Lord 
Iffley and Philip Roberts. They have evidently been 
waiting outside the door. The men bring in a ma- 
hogany bridge table and four gilded chairs. The 
party strikes a note of luxury contrasting strongly 
with Wayne s sober environment. Philip is in a 
business suit. Iffley wears a handsome frock coat 
and tie. They play, Sally sitting out.) 



Clora 

( With light scorn.) 

" Shut that door ! " 
(Apologetically. ) 

Tony is a bear. 

Wayne 

Clora did n't drop to my Parisian accent. I said, 

Je f adore yje f adore / - 

( Writes.) 



28 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 
{Dealing.) 

Tony, you might put on your coat. 

( Wayne does not heed her, but lights a pipe and goes 
on writing.) 

Tony! 

Iffley 
{Intervening.) 

It 's your make, partner. 

Clora 

I 've been five years training him, and he is n't 
even house-broken. 

Iffley 
Your make, Mrs. Wayne. 

Clora 
Tony, do put on your coat ! 

Wayne 
{Swinging round on her.) 
I won't be bossed. When we married, we agreed 



act i] HUSBAND 29 

that if I gave you your way in the little differences, 
you would give me mine in the big ones. 

{Ironically .) 

We must have been very happy. For five years, 
we 've only had little differences. 

Clora 
Then put it on, dear. 

Wayne 
This at last is a big difference. 
{Puffs vigorously and writes.} 

Clora 
If you don't respect me, you might your guests ! 

Wayne 
I tell you, I worit be bossed ! 

Iffley 
Your make, partner. 



30 HUSBAND [act i 

{Reaching across the table, he presses her hand to recall 
her to the game.) 

I say, but what a hand ! 

Philip 

(Quietly, but with intention.) 

If you could only play the hands you hold, Iffley, 
— grand slam ! 

Iffley 
{Ignoring this.) 
It is still your make, partner. 

Wayne 

( Turning again.) 

For heaven's sake, Clora, pretend you 're dummy 
and talk ! 

Clora 

I don't know whether to make it an anaemic heart 
or a bold, bad no-trump. Without ! 



act i] HUSBAND 31 

Mrs. Denton 
I go over. 

(They play.) 

Iffley 
{Laying down the dummy.) 

This is n't a hand — not even a foot : it's a hoof. 
Ha, ha ! an Americanism for Yarborough ! 

(He takes Clord s hand consolingly.) 

Philip 

Iffley, you 'd make your fortune in a massadj 
parlor. 

Clora 
(A little shocked laugh.) 
Philip ! 

(Enter Randall.) 

Randall 
Miss Schuyler, in the drawing-room, madam. 



32 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 
I '11 be there, presently. 

{Exit Randall.) 

Sally 

{A pretty, wholesome girl of nineteen, with a solemn 
sense of humor.) 

I do miss Alfonso. 

Iffley 
{Joining her.) 
Alfonso, Miss Jones ? 

Sally 

My poor, dear husband. You have n't met him ? 
Alas, neither have I. 

Clora 
Don't interrupt, Sally. 

{To Iffley.) 

From a child, instead of playing dolls, she 's played 
she had a husband. Everything I do to Tony she 
pretends to do it to Alfonso. 



act i] HUSBAND 33 

Iffley 
By Jove ! 

{Looks at Sally with frank admiration, ,) 
Lucky Alfonso ! 

Sally 

Do you think so ? He used to mind it dreadfully, 
poor, dear angel-face. He could n't believe how 
needful it was to keep him in his place. Blessed 
baby-lamb. 

{She goes to Wayne and passes her hand across his 
shoulders.) 

Wayne 
{Reaching out and patting her arm.) 
Love to Alfonso. 

{Sally turns on the electric light and draws down the 
shades, then takes up a book and sits reading.) 

{ The telephone rings. Wayne speaks low but distinctly. 
His back is to the bridge party, which is intent on its 
game.) 

Wayne 
Yes, I 've seen it. 



34 HUSBAND [act i 

(Listens.) 

I know. They 're calling me Wayne the Shadchen. 

{Listens.) 

I can't throw up the case. And if I did, they 'd all 
say I was knuckling under to the pee-pul. And 
I should be! They'd have me tied to the third 
rail. I'm in for it, and I've got to see it through. 

{Listens.) 

Yes, he 's here — but what of'itt 

(Listens.) 

See here ! If I were a machine candidate, you 
might talk to me like that. But you fellows are no 
machine ! Not even a monkey wrench ! 

(Listens.) 

You know why I took that case, and what I 'm try- 
ing to do. Tell the reporters that. 

(Listens.) 

If the truth is too thin, then say nothing. Yes, I am 
a candidate of the people. But I 'm no damn dema- 
gogue ! If you must talk — to-night after the meet- 
ing. That '11 do for you now. Tell your troubles 
to Central ! I 've got enough of my own. 

(Hangs up the receiver with a snap?) 



act i] HUSBAND 35 

Clora 
Tony. Will you put on your coat ! 

Wayne 

I tell you no. Do you want to boss me in every 
little act ! 

{He goes on writing?) 

Clora 
(In sudden exasperation?) 
Husband ! 

Mrs. Denton and Sally 

{Alarmed?) 

Clora ! 

Wayne 

(Half rises and speaks in a tone of exasperated rage?) 

How do you dare . . . ! 

Clora 

(Crosses to him and speaks soothingly, to avoid a scene. 
The others are politely unconscious?) 

Tony, dear, I only asked you to look decent. Such 



36 HUSBAND [act i 

a little thing ! Why will you be so selfish ? To 
please you, I 'd do it a thousand times. 

Wayne 

( With an ironical glance at her frock •.) 

In the matter of dress, your unselfishness is monu- 
mental. The pleasure is altogether mine. 

Clora 
Then put on your coat — for me. 

Wayne 

Oh, I 'm a bear ; but, if you will come in here . . . 
To please me, would you give up the least of 
your feminine vices ? Would you stop breaking 
in on my work? Would you stop bossing and 
jarring and nagging ? That is the real test be- 
tween us. Observe : to please you, I put it on. 

(He puts it on with an air of boyish chagrin.} 

( With a breath of relief Clora returns to the table?) 

(As Wayne sits down to write, he religJits his pipe and 
throws the match at the waste basket. It falls on the 



act i] HUSBAND 37 

floor, still lighted. He reaches out his foot, grinds it 
into the carpet, and goes on writing.) 

Clora 
( Who has zvatched him, annoyed.) 

How often have I told you not to throw matches on 
the floor ! And that pipe ! Pouff ! It smells as if 
you smoked your old gum shoes. 

(On a sudden impulse, Way tie gets up without a word, 
glares at Clora, takes off his coat, throws it on the 
floor, and then resumes his writing^) 

Clora 
Husband ! 

{She plays a card and then, more scornfully?) 

Husband! 

(Surveying his negligee with concentrated distaste?) 

HUSBAND ! 

Wayne 

(An outburst?) 

I am your husband — yes ! Good God, when I 
see the women of this land, I wonder what sin we 've 
committed to deserve them ! 



38 HUSBAND [act i 

(Clora faces him as if to answer, but controls herself?) 

Iffley 

(To Wayne, making light of the situation, yet in the 
tone of approval.) 

That's the way to treat 'em. I 'm hot myself. 

(Taking off his frock coat, he throws it on a chair?) 

Wayne 
(Regaining good nature?) 
Yes, do ! Take off your overcoat. 
(To Clora?) 
I have n't lost my temper — only mislaid it. 

Iffley 

(Quite lightly, yet as one used to the prerogative of the 
man and the nobleman?) 

What you need in America is an agitation for meris 
rights. Sufferin'-gents, eh? 

(He lights a cigarette and sits down smoking?) 

( Wayne laughs, relights his pipe, lays his watch open 
before him, and is lost again in his work?) 



act i] HUSBAND 39 

Clora 

Because Tony is a bear, Lord Iffley, you don't 
have to be an Indian. 

Iffley 
Isn't this what you call Indian Summer? 

{Softly to Clora.) 

The man is due in an hour to address twenty thou- 
sand people. You don't want him to expose a 
naked intellect. 

Clora 

He 's worst when he speaks his full mind. Then 
there 's danger of Anthony Comstock. 

Wayne 
{Leaps to his feet.) 

Will you stop whispering ! I tell you I must have 
one place where I can work. Either you leave this 
room or I do. 

Clora 
{Alarmed.) 

Yes, do go somewhere else. 



40 HUSBAND [act i 

( Wayne, gathering up his papers, strides to the door, still 
smoking his pipe.) 

Clora 
Where are you going ! 

Wayne 
To the drawing-room. 

Clora 
Miss Schuyler is there ! 

Wayne 

It 's too late to go to the club. I can't sit out on the 

curbstone. 

{Exit.) 

Clora 
{Running to the door.) 
Tony ! Take your coat 1 

Wayne 
{His voice receding in the hall.) 
Coat be damned ! 



act i] HUSBAND 41 

{Sally, with an annoyed look, puts her nose in her book.) 

Clora 

Coatless in the drawing-room with Miss Schuyler! 
And that pipe ! I never saw Tony so pig-headed. 

{She resumes her seat and, with an effort of self-con- 
trol, plays her last card.) 

Little slam on us, partner — doubled. 

Iffley 
{Casting up the score.) 

Why make it without — on three knaves and a 
guarded nine spot ? Roberts and Mrs. Denton — 
even, by Jove, on the four rubbers. Mrs. Wayne — 
that bold, bad make of yours has reduced your 
winnings to forty-eight dollars. 

{He puts on his coat and looks in his pocket-book.) 

I have n't that much on me ! 

( With Clora he stands apart from the bridge tabled) 

I shall meet you at dinner — the Slades ? 

Clora 
I regretted. Sally and I dine at home. 



42 HUSBAND [act i 

Iffley 
Then I '11 be back here in a jiffy. Au re voir. 
{Fervently.) 

You wonderful creature ! 
( To the others?) 
Good-night. Good-night ! 
{Exit. ) 

Sally 
{Throwing down her book.) 
I 'm off to dress for dinner. 

Clora 
You 're dining out ? I shall be alone, then. 

Sally 

Oh, I am sorry ! The Blagdens asked me to fill 
in. 

(Exit.) 

{A brief silence.) 

Philip 
If Muriel has come to ask your advice — she thinks 



act i] HUSBAND 43 

a whole lot of you, Clora ! — remember, she has no 
one else to help her. She 's always been led by her 
mother. 

(On a sudden thought.") 

It is n't for myself I 'm speaking. She never cared 
for me — never will care ! Only, I know she does n't 
really care for — for any one else. In the end she 's 
the sort of girl to suffer from — that sort of mar- 
riage. If she does talk it over with you — 

Clora 
( With genuine kindness?) 
I '11 do the best I can, Philip. 

Philip 
I 'm sure you will. Good-by. 
(Exit?) 

Clora 

(Her whole manner changing, presses her temples with 
her palms?) 

Quarreling in public ! 

(Bitterly^ 

Oh! Oh! 



44 HUSBAND [act i 

Mrs. Denton 

It's Lord Iffley — the marriage — that has got on 
Tony's nerves. And, Clora, it was you who made 
him mix up in it. 

Clora 

Why not? He has only to become known to such 
people to form the most valuable connections — 
get the big, important cases ; rise to the top of his 
profession. While he has fought to keep the Jews 
from sweating each other, and mixed up in hare- 
brained politics, he has kept us poor. 

Mrs. Denton 

Poor ? Years ago I wrote an article for the Sunday 
papers arguing that young people in New York 
can't live on less than fifteen thousand a year — 

Clora 
(Interrupting. ) 
That 's all we have now. 

Mrs. Denton 
Yes, but then ! You and Tony were engaged on 



act i] HUSBAND 45 

nothing a year. You called me fifteen kinds of a 
liar — rubbed it in that Archie and I were liv- 
ing on twenty-five hundred ; that I only wrote the 
article to pay the rent. Clora, you 've become ter- 
ribly high-life ! 

Clora 

You, too ! You made Archie build your studio 
house, on mortgage, to stand in with the rich and 
paint their portraits. 

Mrs. Denton 
( With a little shrug.) 

It should have trebled his income. Only, along 
came those magazine exposures. Just as we moved 
in, all our best citizens were muckraked, and family 
portraits went out of fashion. 

Clora 
(Laughing.) 
Well, then! 

Mrs. Denton 
(Ruefully.) 
Archie still paints pot-boilers, and I still write soci- 



46 HUSBAND [act i 

ety gossip. Were n't we all happier — we with our 
chafing-dish meals, you in that dingy old apart- 
ment where callers whistled up a tube ? 

Clora 

I remember those days. Tony loved me. Better, I 
loved him! 

Mrs. Denton 
If we could go back to them ! 

Clora 
It was a different world. 

Mrs. Denton 

A world in which we were all happy. If we could 
go back — ! 

Clora 

The question is, could Tony ! That is the tragedy 
of life. A woman is always a woman : a man, when 
he marries, is a husband. Quarreling in public ! 
This is the beginning of the end. 



act i] HUSBAND 47 

Mrs. Denton 

Have you thought of the end — the end of your 
husband ? Miss Levine, and her oriental beauty ? 



Clora 



{Surprised.} 
Miss Levine? 



Mrs. Denton 



From the moment Tony joined her in the Legal 
Aid Society, she threw over the father of that child 
of hers and worked with Tony, side by side. While 
you are amusing yourself, she holds the place that 
belongs to you. 

Clora 

{Laughing a little harshly.} 

Tony have an affair ! Tony ! All he can do is to sit 
in a corner and make a noise like a husband. 

Mrs. Denton 

But if somebody sits beside him and makes a noise 
like a wife ? 



48 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 

Not with Tony. If he ever had a thought of her, 
he '11 forget her as soon as he is beaten and out of 
politics. 

Mrs. Denton 

If he is beaten. But he has gained strength with 
every speech he 's made. All over the country the 
people are rebelling against the bosses. Both regu- 
lar parties are terribly scared at your Tony. 

Clora 

But if he wins, he '11 have to give up his profession 
— just as he is making the most valuable associa- 
tions. Can you see us — living on the salary of an 
honest politician ? 

Mrs. Denton 
Are you sure you don't want Tony to be beaten? 

Clora 
( Genuinely offended. ) 
Alice! Alice! 



act i] HUSBAND 49 

Mrs. Denton 

Then at least you can set him right in this mar- 
riage muddle. 

Clora 
I! 

* 

Mrs. Denton 

I overheard Tony at the telephone. The nose for 
news ! His managers want him to publish a state- 
ment. 

Clora 
Well? 

Mrs. Denton 

They say the truth is too thin. But not the whole 
truth — as I know it. 

Clora 
As you know it ? 

Mrs. Denton 

You will admit, in the matter of his coat Tony 
acted the man of the people. 



50 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 
Quite. Oh, quite ! The pee-pul ! 

Mrs. Denton 

He converted Lord Iffley to play bridge in his 
shirtsleeves. At this moment he is with the most 
famous heiress in the country — coatless in the 
drawing-room. 

Clora 
But — 

Mrs. Denton 

The two great news topics are Miss Schuyler's 
marriage and Tony's campaign. A story that com- 
bines them, throws an unexpected light on both, 
will get a full page, and no end of comment. 

Clora 

But Lord Iffley — Miss Schuyler ! They are my 
guests. 

Mrs. Denton 

I can't urge you. Yet, if you really want Tony to 
win, a situation that is compromising you all can 



act i] HUSBAND 51 

be turned into the strongest campaign document. 
Thousands of votes for Tony ! Lord Iffley is com- 
ing back here. Why not ask him? 

Clora 

Make political capital out of what passes beneath 
my roof ? 



{Enter Randall.") 



Randall 



Miss Schuyler is dining out, madam, and can re- 
main only a moment. 

Clora 
Tell her I '11 be right in. 

Randall 

Mr. Wayne, madam, is there. I spoke to him. I 
would n't advise, madam — 

Clora 
Ask Miss Schuyler in here. 
(Exit Randall?) 



52 HUSBAND [act i 

Mrs. Denton 
You forgive me ? 
(They kiss.) 

If Lord Iffley agrees, let me know. 
{Exit.) 

{Enter Miss Schuyler, announced by Randall. She is 
delicately beautiful and aristocratic ; at once shy and 
girlishly frank?) 

Clora 

Pardon me for keeping you. There has been a 
piece in the paper about me, and friends came — 
to console me. 

Miss Schuyler 
I saw it. You know I could n't believe such things. 

Clora 
{Impulsively?) 
Bless you for that — and for coming to tell me ! 

Miss Schuyler 
Yet — I 've always had a doubt. And to-day — 



act i] HUSBAND 53 

Clora 

To-day ? 

Miss Schuyler 

My old nurse, Mary Finnerty, said they were sell- 
ing me, my body and my soul, to a man of the 
blackest character. I laughed — she's Irish and 
hates the nobility ; but she showed me the paper, 
and painted such a picture! Of course I don't 
believe her — 

Clora 
Of course. 

Miss Schuyler 
Yet she said — I must know if it is true ! 

Clora 
( With warm sympathy?) 
Tell me, dear. 

Miss Schuyler 

— that young noblemen — and women — live only 
to amuse themselves. So many American girls 
have married abroad and — gone wrong ! In New 
York it is coming to be as bad. She said — I can't 



54 HUSBAND [act i 

say it ! But for a moment, it made me believe that 
in the end, if I marry a man who does n't love me, 
I shall be so too — that everybody . . . I don't be- 
lieve it ! And yet, if Lord Iffley — if you — You 
are not angry with me ? 

Clora 

( With young motherly tenderness^ 

Dear child, no. When I first saw the world — what 
is black in it — I suffered, oh, I did suffer ! — hor- 
ror, a feeling of degradation. So does every young 
girl. And your case is so much harder ! Even if I 
were all your old nurse said, dearest, I could n't be 
angry, only love you the more. Has your mother 
never talked to you — ? 

Miss Schuyler 
Never. She put me off — makes me feel that she 
thinks as ill of men as old Mary. 

Clora 

I '11 tell you the truth. There are many bad people, 
men and women. The luxurious and the fashion- 
able may be worse than others — I can't say. It is 
true that Lord Iffley and I have seen a good deal 



act i] HUSBAND 55 

of each other. He was among those who came in 
this afternoon. 

Miss Schuyler 
I heard his voice. 

Clora 

But that I am what the paper, your nurse, said — 
never, in deed or in thought ! 

Miss Schuyler 

(Throwing her arms about Clora.) 

I knew it, I knew it ! I'm so glad ! If you had 
been angry or hesitated, even a moment — what I 
should have suffered ! 

Clora 

I know many women in New York. Some of them 
are bad ; more are weak or reckless ; but most of 
all, even those who know the world best, are inno- 
cent as you are. 

Miss Schuyler 

[Kissing her with affectionate, almost hysterical laugh- 
ter^) 

I knew it, I knew it, I knew it ! 



56 HUSBAND [act i 

(Standing away from Clora.) 
You don't mind, Mrs. Wayne ? 

Clora 
I love you for it. 

{Taking her again in her arms.) 

Miss Schuyler 

May I talk to you about Lord Iffley — about Ed- 
mund? 

Clora 
Surely — if you wish. 

Miss Schuyler 
You think him charming ? 

Clora 

Very charming — very. He has the Eton and the 
Oxford mariner — amusing, winning, yet manly : 
dangerous, too ; for everything he has wanted he 
has always had it. He is quite the nobleman. 

Miss Schuyler 

And if he wanted — me? Would he see so little 
of me, so much of — of others ? 



act i] HUSBAND 57 

Clora 
You yourself can tell best. 

Miss Schuyler 
He said he did, and he — was so charming ! 

(She turns away her face.) 

I know I 'm a little fool. But you 're the only one 
I can talk to who knows him ! He is charming ! But 
so he is to everyone. And after he — spoke to me 
— that very day — did you hear ? — he drank too 
much at the club, and then at a dance. If he only 
said what he said — forced himself to say it — 
If he loves— some one else — you would tell 
me . . . 

Clora 
{After a brief pause?) 

Is n't the important question whether you love 
him? 

Miss Schuyler 

But how can I tell ? There never has been any one 
else — except Philip, and he *s more a brother . . . 



58 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 

If you loved Lord Iffley, I think you would know 
it. I am sure you 'd not come with all this to me. 

Miss Schuyler 

I told mother I did n't. She said, of course not — 
that it 's better I should n't ; that the best, the most 
lasting love comes after marrying — the love of 
a husband. Do you think so ? 

Clora 

{Exclaiming.) 

A husband ! Do you know what a husband is ? A 
wild, dangerous, glorious thing that has become 
stupidly tame. A kitten on the hearthrug is more 
exciting — much less a nuisance! No, no. Better 
once in a lifetime have love ! 

Miss Schuyler 
Then you advise . . . ? 

Clora 
I can't advise — for personal reasons. 



act i] HUSBAND 59 

Miss Schuyler 
But if Lord Iffley . . . if Edmund . . . if / . . . 

Clora 
The reasons are connected with Tony. 

Miss Schuyler 

Mr. Wayne ! All along he has influenced father 
against the marriage. Mother is furious. 

Clora 

People don't know that. It 's hurting him dread- 
fully in politics. I got him to act for your father, 
and now, to be square, I have to get him out of 
the fix. I want you to call off the whole affair — 
by Tony's advice. 

Miss Schuyler 
But if it were n't for that ? 

Clora 

The instinct that made you come to me — I think 
it was right. But remember ! I have Tony's axe 
to grind. 



60 HUSBAND [act i 

Miss Schuyler 

(Impulsively^) 

Even if he is a husband, dearie, you do love him ! 
I can't bear to think — 

Clora 
( With sub-acid amusement?) 
You saw him in the drawing-room — ? 

Miss Schuyler 

Writing — his speech ! What was he thinking — 
the few words he was jotting down — to-night in 
Madison Square, with that great, deep voice of 
his and his splendid presence, it w T ill rouse thou- 
sands, tens of thousands, to cheer after cheer ! 

Clora 

His voice — did he speak to you ? His presence 
— you saw the shirtsleeves ? 

Miss Schuyler 

A great, burly, untidy boy. When the butler came 
in, he roared like a lion. 



act i] HUSBAND 61 

Clora 
Or like a husband. 

Miss Schuyler 

A lion ! I adore lions. Did you ever want to have 
as a pet a huge, soft lion that, except for his love 
for you, would sink his claws into you, take your 
throat in his white teeth — tear you to pieces ? 

Clora 

You have thought that ! Then it is best, dear child, 
to wait for the lion. 

{Enter Wayne, looking at his watch. With a hurried, 
absent nod, he crosses and picks up his coat.) 

Miss Schuyler 

Mr. Wayne ! Roar like a lion ! Gnash your teeth, 
devour her ! She adores it ! 

{She laughs and kisses Clora, who embraces her.) 

You have made me so happy ! 

{Exit.) 

Wayne 

What 's that nonsense ! 



62 HUSBAND [act i 

(Passing Clora near the door.) 

Oh, don't sit up for me. My managers are going 
to row me about this mess. I shan't be back till 
the small hours. 



(He turns to go.) 
Tony . . . 



Clora 



Wayne 

(Remembering, he takes her face between his hands 
and kisses her cheek in a perfunctory way?) 

Sleep well, dearest. 

Clora 
Tony! 

Wayne 

(Turning.) 

Yes? 

Clora 

For the first time, after five years, we have quar- 
reled — in public ! You leave me without a word. 

Wayne 

(Absently.) 

I 'm tired, dear, and cross. I'll try to be better. 



act i] HUSBAND 63 

Clora 
{Discouraged?) 
You are a husband ! 

Wayne 

(Facing her earnestly?) 
Are you my wife ? 

Clora 

Your wife! Your ideal of a wife is a strenuous, 
high-browed person. Men fall in love with their 
opposites — then expect their wives to be like them- 
selves, precisely. 

Wayne 
Jove, I never thought of that. 
{Amused?) 
A wife like me — how I should adore her! 

{Delighted with a new idea?) 

Every man his own true wife — what a lot of 
trouble it would save ! 

{Kisses her again?) 

Good-by. Yet I am rather fond of you, too. 



64 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 
Of me, too — rather fond. 
(A wry face.) 
Good-by, my husband, good-by ! 

Wayne 
{Seriously.) 

What has come over you? As a girl you were 
quiet, domestic. 

Clora 

Domestic? Have you forgotten how we lived — 
grandmem, Sally and I ? 

Wayne 
The most beautiful apartment in all the city ! 

Clora 

As a lover you used to say that. It was a mere hutch 
on top of an apartment house — built for the jani- 
tor. We were so poor, it was that or the suburbs. 
Domestic? Quiet? I married to escape domestic 
quiet — to get a lover. 



act i] HUSBAND 65 

Wayne 
( With a touch of boyish grotesque?) 
To get me. Cheer up ! You *ve got me. 
(He makes as if to go.) 

Clora 
(In a dry tone?) 

You speak as if you were a disease. Oh, / 've got 
you. 

Wayne 
I married for a wife — 

Clora 
(Bitterly.) 
For a wife like you ! 

Wayne 

(Still delighted with the idea.) 

Don't remind me of my lost happiness ! 

(Ruefully.) 

I got a woman in society. 



66 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 
{Laughing a little harshly.) 

At least we are better off than the Wellowbys. 
Each married the other for his money, and be- 
tween them they had n't enough to buy a divorce. 
We can get one. 



Wayne 



Nonsense, dear. 



Clora 



In reality, with your work day and night, we are 
divorced already. 

Wayne 

My work ? Is n't it your social climbing ? They 
think they have to have you everywhere Iffley 
goes — without me. You used to have one hour in 
the day for me. 

Clora 

Then I was bored ! You ate like a commercial drum- 
mer at the station, and bolted to catch the train. 
Evening after evening I spent alone — until I 
knew by heart every spot on the wall paper — as 



act i] HUSBAND 67 

a prisoner knows the stones of his cell. I thought 
marriage meant freedom — and found myself a 
convict. Even now when we meet at midnight, for 
the first time all day, you answer me "yes," "no," 
with the face of a pudding, and fall asleep beside 
me like a log. 

Wayne 

In New York that is scarcely ground for divorce. 
Clora, dear ! 

{Looking at his watch.) 

You are only tired out — suffering from over-ex- 
cited nerves. 

Clora 

True — over-excited nerves! But they are not my 
nerves ! 

Wayne 
(Earnestly!) 

Are you quite square with me ? To pay your bills 
I grind myself into a stupor — and you round on 
me for being dull. I go short of sleep for weeks, 
until my nerves are jumping ; and you find amuse- 
ment with — others. Really, is it square ? 



68 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 

Listen to the heart-throbs of the American hus- 
band. The world thinks you a poor, driven beast 

— but you are having- the time of your life. The 
only thing you care for is work — and you revel 
in it day and night. You rate me for extravagance 

— you, who have left me only the interests that 
money can buy ! With love I could live on no- 
thing — and did so, as long as you gave me love. 
Give it again, and I will forget the whole world ! 

Wayne 
Are you really unhappy ? 

Clora 

Yes ! Miserably unhappy ! 

( Vehemently^ 

You, with your calm sense of justice, your unan- 
swerable reason, tell me, have you been square 
to me? I was a young girl. Your strength and 
your love awoke in me a whole world of enjoy- 
ment, of tenderness, of passion. You made me 
laugh with you — and you can be amusing, though 
heaven knows no one would suspect it. You made 



act i] HUSBAND 69 

me proud of you, fear you, worship you ! If I am 
mad for excitement, it is you who taught me that 
madness ! Then you left me alone and lonesome, 
to eat out my heart in neglect. We are divorced 
in spirit, and we shall be so in fact ! 

Wayne 

Sweetheart ! You are yourself — you could n't do 
anything that is not clean, and honest, 

Clora 

That is your idea of honesty — to live on coldly 
with a man who has become a stranger. Virtue is 
a passion, or it is nothing. It is warm, warm, 
warm / 

Wayne 
( Tenderly.) 

I do love you, with all my heart. And you love 
me. In all these five years, we have not been sepa- 
rated one single night. 

Clora 

If you could only make me believe you — feel I 
believe you ! 

{He takes her in his arms.) 



70 HUSBAND [act i 

When people love each other, do they grow so 
dreadfully far apart ? 

Wayne 
Are we so dreadfully far apart ? 

Clora 

It is my birthday. I refused a dinner to Lord Iffley, 
hoping you 'd give me this one evening. Tony, I 
need you ! You forgot — as you forgot last year. 
If I was cross just now, that 's why ! 

Wayne 
I did n't forget. 

{Going to his desk.) 

I put a memorandum on my calendar, eight days 
ago. Only — 

{Fumbling the leaves?) 

I have n't had time since to tear off the leaves. 

Clora 
{Reads tJie calendar over his shoulder.) 
" Clora's birthday. This time, hump yourself ! " 
{A grimace.) 



act i] HUSBAND 71 

Wayne 

(He takes her in his arms and kisses her playfully \ three 
times.) 

One for each year ! 

(He releases her.) 

Clora 
But that 's only three. 

Wayne 

That's all the older you are, child — or you'd 
never doubt we love each other. 

Clora 
Pretend I 'm four. 

(He kisses her in a perfunctory manner?) 
Five ! I don't mind a bit how old I am. 
(He kisses her.) 
Six ! It 's so long since we 've been like this ! 

Wayne 

We 've always been like this. 

(As he says this s he covertly looks again at his watch?) 



72 HUSBAND [act i 

Heavens, I ought to be speaking my piece this 
minute. 

(He snatches up his coat and goes out hurriedly?) 

Clora 

(As if still speaking to Wayne.) 

Always like this ! Love by time-table ! Cupid 
catching the train ! 

(She sits down, with her hands in her lap.) 

One little lover, sitting all alone. She married him, 
and then she had none ! 

(She picks up Ifflefs bridge score, looks at it with a 
moments interest, then wearily throws it down?) 

(Enter Sally in a dinner-gown.) 

Sally 

It 's dinner bridge. I shan't be back till the small 
hours. You '11 be here all alone ? Get a good sleep, 
do. 

Clora 
(Stifling a little yawn?) 
Sleep? I 'm suffering from over-excited nerves. 



act i] HUSBAND 73 

Sally 

(Not heeding this,) 

Good-night ! 

(Exit.) 

Clora 

(Folding her hands again?) 

By this time the lion is roaring. 

(Half covers a larger yawn.) 

(Enter Randall.) 

Randall 
His Lordship to see you, madam. 

Clora 
Hold dinner till half past eight. 

(Exit Randall?) 

(Clora rises with animation, and paces the room?) 

(Lord Iffley is announced and enters. He has on a din- 
ner jacket?) 

Iffley 

Alone ? That 's lucky. 



74 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 
( With a little start.} 
Lucky ? 

Iffley 

( With good-natured embarrassment?) 

Fact is, I 've got to welch a bit on that bridge 
score. 

Clora 
{Relieved?) 
Oh! 

Iffley 

{Taking a check from his pocket-book.) 

That's every last penny I have in the bank, and it 
leaves me four dollars shy. 

Clora 
{Takes the check mechanically?) 
But if this is all you have — 

Iffley 

It's only a few days till my next remittance — if 
you '11 trust me for the rest? 



act i] HUSBAND 75 

Clora 
But meantime — if I may — How will you live ? 

Iffley 

(Cheerfully?) 

I always dine out. Sometimes I 'm asked to lunch- 
eon ! For breakfast — they hang me up at your 
hospitable clubs. 

Clora 
But pocket money ! I can't leave you destitute ! 

Iffley 
{Lightly, but with latent dignity?) 
Mind your own business, fair lady 1 

Clora 
(Protesting?) 
Edmund ! 

Iffley 
Clorinda ! 

Clora 
Show me that you have pocket money ! 



76 HUSBAND [act i 

Iffley 
Is this what you call a hold-up ? 

Clora 
Show me a single dollar ! 

Iffley 
You do like havin' your own way. 

Clora 
Half a dollar ! 

Iffley 
And you'll drop the subject? 

Clora 
Agreed. 

Iffley 

{Produces a half dollar, flips it in the air, and pockets 
it with a grin.) 

You are a good sort, Clorinda. Honor bright, if I 
really needed money, I 'd as soon borrow from you 
as any felleh ! 



act i] HUSBAND 77 

Clora 
Then let me — 

{She moves to tear up the check.) 

Iffley 
{Taking her firmly by the hands.) 
No, no You shan't boss me ! 

Clora 

(Resigning her hands to him.) 

With this matter on hand, you must keep up ap- 
pearances. 

Iffley 

{Dropping her hands?) 

Wretched business. Don't remind me. 

Clora 

But if it falls through! Tony is doing his best 
against you. Miss Schuyler asked my advice. I 
could n't encourage her. 

Iffley 
Nor I. The day I — asked her, I — what do you 



78 HUSBAND [act i 

call it — I fell off the sprinklirv wagon. For two 
years I 'd been — up with the driver, smackin' the 
whip. 

Clora 
Then why, why do you do it? 

Iffley 

I want to go in for politics. Among my disagree- 
able traits is a sense of public duty. I 'm feahfully 
keen about the Empire ! But I 've an uncle — one 
Earl, and a cousin, his noble heir . . . 

Clora 
I know. 

Iffley 

They detest me. My pasty-faced cousin was Master 
of Hounds. He 's a rotten horseman and they made 
me Master in his place. Made 'em peevish; — tied 
up my money, on a technicality. And there 's a sort 
of a tradition — coves like me are always marryin' 
money. 

{Enter Randall with a long, slender florist } s box.) 



act i] HUSBAND 79 

Randall 
A package for you, madam. 
{Exit.) 

Clora 
{Opening the box.) 
A single, splendid rose. Who could have sent it ? 

Iffley 
Oh, charmin'? What did you say you advised? 

Clora 
I can't interfere. 

Iffley 
The trouble is, you have interfered. 

Clora 

I? 

Iffley 

Until I met you, I was all for the main chance. 
But by heaven, you 're a new sort on me ! 

{As if accusing her.) 

Do you know that you have a man's sense of 



80 HUSBAND [act i 

honor, and of comradeship ! You have shown me 
your whole frank heart, and it has called out a na- 
ture that is better than my best. I spare you the 
mention of sundry eyes and a smile — that worry 
me enough, however. 

( With quiet but intense passion?) 

With you here, good God, how can I do it ! Every 
time I think of it I find myself — climbin' down 
from that sprinklin' cart. 

(Clora covers her eyes with her hands. Iffley walks 
away from her toward the window?) 

{Reenter Randall with another and similar box.) 

Clora 
(Opening- it.) 
Another ! Two people thought of the same ? 

(She puts it in another vase.) 

(To Randall.) 

Did they come together ? 

Randall 
Yes, madam. 



act i] HUSBAND 81 

Iffley 
Charmin'. 

{Mocking.) 

How beautifully you arrange flowers ! Now if I 
were doing it — 

{He takes her hand, and picking tip the rose, drops it in 
the same position?) 

That isn't half as pretty. You do it right, Clo- 
rinda. 

{He does not, however, let go of her hand.) 

Clora 
( Withdrawing it.) 
Edmund ! 
{Reenter Randall with a third box like the rest.) 

Iffley 
Another ! By Jove ! 

Clora 
Who can be sending them ! Three ! 
{To Randall.) 
Are there any more? 



82 HUSBAND [act i 

Randall 
No more, madam. 
(Exit.) 

Clora 

Three ! It must be Tony ! My birthday ! One for 
each year ! 

Iffley 

Three? You're gettin' along, Clorinda, gettin' 
along. 

Clora 

Think of Tony's remembering ! He took time on 
his way to his meeting ! Cupid caught the train ! 

( With animation she goes to the desk.) 

I '11 write him a note — to be delivered while he 's 
tearing the public to bits. 

Iffley 

(Following her, takes her hand, and tries to prevent her 
writing?) 

I would n't ! I would n't ! 



act i] HUSBAND 83 

Clora 
You remember what Philip said at bridge? 

Iffley 

" Make my fortune " — the rascal — " in a massadj 
parlor." 

Clora 

This is not a massage parlor. 

Iffley 

( With dignity.) 

Clorinda ! 

Clora 

And it 's not here your fortune awaits you ! 

Iffley 
{Proudly?) 

I stand rebuked. 

Clora 

Ring for Randall, and tell him to call a messenger. 

(Iffley rings ■, though with evident reluctance.) 
(Clora writes?) 
(Enter Randall.) 



84 HUSBAND [act i 

Iffley 
(Crossing to the door.) 
A messenger. 
(In a lowered voice?) 
Very well done, Randall. 
(He puts the half dollar in RandalVs hand?) 

Randall 
I thank your Lordship. 

Clora 

(Looks about and sees this. Her face c/ianges.) 

Never mind, Randall. I shan't need the mes- 
senger. 

(Randall bows and goes out.) 

It was you, Edmund, who sent the flowers ! You 
remembered my birthday ! 

Iffley 
Remembered ! 

Clora 
And it was to prevent embarrassing me — and 



act i] HUSBAND 85 

Tony — that you stayed my hand! For what I 
said, I 'm humbly sorry ! 

(Reflecting?) 

But how did you happen to send just three ? 

Iffley 

If you insist on sordid details — it was all I had 
money for, with the half crown for the man. 

Clora 
And I was writing to thank Tony ! 
(She rises arid laughs harshly?) 

Iffley 
What 's the matter? Don't! Don't! 

Clora 
(Hysterically. ) 
Husband ! Husband! 

Iffley 
Good God, if I were ! 
(He takes her in his arms?) 



86 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 
No! 
(She struggles free '.) 

Leave me. Go! 

Iffley 

(Standing away from her.) 

Go — where? To the devil, where I belong! 

{Enter Randall.) 

Randall 
Dinner is served, madam. 

(Exit.) 

Iffley 

Good-night. 

Clora 
(Observing his clothes?) 
You 're not dining out ? 

Iffley 
I telephoned that I was ill. 

Clora 
Telephone that you 're better, and they '11 wait. 



act I] HUSBAND 87 

Iffley 

I couldn't go now — meet people — now! What 
do you think a man is made of ! It would drive 
me — off the sprinklin' cart. 

Clora 
But where will you dine? 

Iffley 
At the club. 

Clora 

Ah ! And — the water wagon ? 

(On a sudden resolution.) 

No ! Stay with me. I ordered dinner for two. 

(She takes a rose, and breaking the stem puts it in his 
lapel.) 

Iffley 

(Misunderstanding her, looks at her tvith a deep gleam 
in his eye.) 

I love you. 

(He takes her by the shoulders?) 
I love you. 



88 HUSBAND [act i 

Clora 
{Adroitly evading him) 
No, no, child ! 
(Holding tip both palms) 
All gone. All gone ! 

(Iffley follows and catches her firmly in his arms.) 

Clora 
No! No! 

(She throws her head back from him) 

Iffley 

(His voice vibrating with passion and with command) 

You wonderful girl, what have you done to me ! 
Good God, say that you love me ! Say it, or I '11 
crush the life out of you ! 

(She gives a little, stifled cry of pain. He kisses her 
full upoji tlie lips. Her head sinks upon his shoulder) 

CURTAIN 



ACT II 



ACT II 

Scene : — Mrs. Wayne s drawing-room. An air of lux- 
ury ', in striking contrast with the simplicity of Wayne } s 
study. The furniture is Louis XV gilded. On the 
lower left a table is set for tea. The walls are of 
crimson brocade. A low bookcase is filled with a 
variety of handsomely bound books. The apartment 
occupies the full width of the second story front of 
a rather small modern city dwelling. 

Discovered : — Sally, at the tea table, dealing the 
cards for Canfield. 

Sally 
( With solemn disgust^) 
Did you ever see such a rotten layout ! 

{Enter Mrs. Jones, announced by Randall. She is sev- 
enty, and dressed in black silk and lace, but with 
more than a touch of coquetry and smartness. She 
has the conventionally audacious sense of humor, but 
her manner reveals dignity and sweetness of char- 
acter^) 



92 HUSBAND [act ii 

Sally 

Hello, grandmem ! These cards come worse every 
time. I owe Mr. Canfield eleven hundred dollars. 
Lucky he does n't know it — for his own peace of 
mind ! Will you have tea ? 

(She lights a lamp beneath the kettle?) 

Mrs. Jones 
Solitaire at tea ? 

Sally 
Nobody ever comes. 

Mrs. Jones 
Wait till you 're married. 

Sally 
(In mock despair?) 
How shall I ever be married, if nobody ever comes ? 

Mrs. Jones 

You have no savoir faire. I made your grandfather 
take me out skating on the mill-pond. I fell in, and 
he had to carry me bodily home. I froze both feet 
and an elbow. 



act ii] HUSBAND 93 

(Nibbling a crumpet^) 

But for once in his life your dear grandfather 
thawed. 

Sally 

Maysie-mem ! 

(Mock tragically?) 

In Central Park they keep you off till the ice is 
solid as a cellar floor. 

Mrs. Jones 
This unnatural modern life in cities ! 
(Demurely^ 
But Clora's young men — she can't want them all? 

Sally 

There aren't anymore — since Lord Iffley . . . 
Not that I want them. 

Mrs. Jones 
Not want to be married 1 

Sally 
Of course I do. But not that kind. 



94 HUSBAND [act ii 

Mrs. Jones 
What kind? 

Sally 

Men who hang about married women — mere 
poachers, paper sports. If one of them found him- 
self caring, for a girl he might have to marry, and 
pay her bills, he 'd have heart failure. 

Mrs. Jones 
You are judging by Lord Iffley ? 

Sally 
Strangely enough, no ! He 's a man — dangerous. 

Mrs. Jones 
{Eyeing her narrowly?) 
Dangerous — to you ? 

Sally 
(Laughing?) 

Little mouse Sally — can you see me as Her Lady- 
ship? 



act ii] HUSBAND 95 

Mrs. Jones 

Why not? He 's neglecting Miss Schuyler dread- 
fully. 

Sally 
Maysie ! Ask your elder grand-daughter. 

(Enter Mrs. Denton, announced?) 

Mrs. Jones 
How is that dear genius of a husband of yours? 

Mrs. Denton 

Don't remind me ! Laid up with grip and a raging 
fever. Worry and overwork ! Poor boy, his whole 
heart is in a great canvas he 's blocked out. 

Sally 
(Interested?) 

He has such wonderful ideas ! Some day you '11 
wake up to find yourself the wife of a great, great 
painter ! 

Mrs. Denton 

He 's had to put by all serious work for six months 



96 HUSBAND [act ii 

— to do illustrations. Last night he went quite off 
his head — imagined the dear little grip microbes 
were duns, digging at his temples to get away 
his brains. At midnight he woke me up and told 
me that a subway express, full of strap-hanging 
microbes, was roaring up his spinal column and 
crashing into his brains at the Grand Central Sta- 
tion. It 's all my fault. 

Mrs. Jones 
Your fault ? 

Mrs. Denton 
The mortgage on the house. 

Mrs. Jones 
(Sympathetically .) 

Too bad. But never let him forget, dear, how 
lucky he is — that he has you ! 

Mrs. Denton 
(Dejectedly?) 

When he sees me, he only worries harder. And I 
can't afford to go away. 



act ii] HUSBAND 97 

{Lightly, but by no means flippantly?) 

When other men are sick, the doctors send their 
wives to Atlantic City — for the dear fellows' 
health. 

Sally 
{Sincerely?) 
Oh, I am sorry ! 

Mrs. Jones 

( Taking Mrs. Denton s hand?) 

Don't mind the duns. 

( With motherly benignity?) 

If one paid them, how would the poor fellows get 
any work ? Not to pay them is a duty we owe to 
the unemployed. 

Mrs. Denton 

( With forced gayety. ) 

At least Archie has the new house to be laid up 
in. The artistic temperament is so sensitive to en- 
vironment. If he were as sick as he is, in our 
shabby old studio flat — it would make him fairly 
ill! 



98 HUSBAND [act ii 

Sally 
( With serio-comic solicitude^ 
Oh, I hope Archie understands that. 

Mrs. Denton 

I explained it last night. He saw the point at once 
— his mind was so active — and fell into a deep 
sleep. 

Sally 
{Mock coyly.) 
Nobody asks me about Alfonso. 

Mrs. Denton 
I forgot ! He has appendicitis ? 

Sally 

(Solemnly.) 

It wasn't his appendix at all, the doctor said — 
only his table of contents. 

Mrs. Denton 
So Alfonso has a less abundant table. 



act ii] HUSBAND 99 

Sally 

Precisely. But he 's developed pinkeye. He says 
he caught it for my sake. We 've been married 
ten years, but with his pinkeye he still sees me 
couleur de rose. 

Mrs. Denton 

No husband should be without it ! Tony, for ex- 
ample. Those awful articles — the papers are full 
of them. 

Sally 
Somebody ought to speak to Clora. 
(To Mrs. Denton?) 
Why not you ? 

Mrs. Denton 
I spoke — yesterday. 
(Shrugs her shoulders?) 

Sally 
(To her grandmother,) 
Isn't it up to you, Maysie? 



ioo HUSBAND [act ii 

Mrs. Jones 

I can't pretend to superior virtue. Long past 
Clora's age I was doing the same. Your grand- 
father was a sensible dear — said it did him good 
to be spelled. Besides, 

( With half-conscious vanity) 

Clora would only think I wanted Lord Iffley my- 
self. 

Sally 
But for Tony's sake — 

Mrs. Jones 

It 's Tony's fault! If you speak to any one, speak 
to Tony. 

Sally 
Maysie, you are an ancient reprobate. 

Mrs. Jones 

Hoity-toity ! Did Tony ever share his life with 
Clora — make her his comrade ? 



act ii] HUSBAND 10 1 

Sally 

He took her among his people — in the Ghetto. 
She bossed them within an inch of their lives — 
tried to improve their manners ! The only result 
was that she herself began doing so ! 

(A flicker of her palm beneath her chin.) 

Mrs. Jones 
At least she could help him with politicians. 

Sally 

He asked her to. She tried to force afternoon tea 
on them. Beyond certain limits, even a politician 
won't be bossed. Tea ! They refused to be water- 
logged. 

Mrs. Jones 
Why did n't he ask them to dinner ? 

Sally 

He did. She overawed them so, with her low 
gowns and her air of high life, that they ate on the 
sly — as if they were stuffing ballot-boxes. 



102 HUSBAND [act n 

Mrs. Jones 

{Ph ilosophically^) 

American life ! It is hardest of all on women — who 
stand for culture. 

Sally 

American life? Culture? If Clora had children — 
she 's simply eaten up with the maternal instinct ! 

Mrs. Jones 

Clora ? 

Sally 

That 's why she bosses every one. If she had a 
nursery to run, she 'd let up on Tony. 

{Demurely.) 

Now Alfonso and I . . . You know we 're ex- 
pect — 

Mrs. Jones 

Sally ! ! You 're positively Mid- Victorian. You 
remind me of my greenest girlhood. Listen. Once, 
on a park bench, a man spoke to me . . . 

Sally 
Maysie! You axe fin de Steele/ 



act ii] HUSBAND 103 

Mrs. Jones 

Alas ! This was no affaire du cceur. A poor, 
wretched fellow. His wife, the mother of his eight 
children, had eloped with the plumber. " Now 
you 'd think that would have satisfied her," he 
said, " eight children ! " I told him no, not for a 
minute. She was a woman, and what a woman 
wants is love. 

{Enter Philip Roberts. He greets Sally heartily and 
kisses Mrs. Jones.) 

Philip 

I 'm lucky to find you all. Before any one comes 
in — that rotten article yesterday ! Some anony- 
mous blackguard has reprinted it, and is sending 
it by the thousand to every voter on the East Side. 

Mrs. Jones 

It 's too absurd ! What have Muriel Schuyler and 
her sprig of nobility to do with politics ! 

Philip 
Nothing at all — except everything. That article 



104 HUSBAND [act ii 

cuts both ways. Decent people are shocked at 
what it says about Clora. The socialists are calling 
Tony the title-hunting democrat, the Shadchen of 
swollen fortunes. Tammany says that to win now 
will be taking candy from a kid. 

Sally 

And Clora still sees Lord Iffley ! Somebody must 
pull her up ! 

Mrs. Denton 
As Tony's partner and friend, why not you? 

Philip 
Hardly a man's work. 

{Enter Miss Schuyler. An embarrassed pause.} 

Sally 
{Greeting her.) 
We were just talking of you — that is, of Clora. 

Miss Schuyler 
(Relieved?) 
Yes ! It was about that I came. 



act ii] HUSBAND 105 

Mrs. Denton 
(To Sally and Mrs. Jones.) 
I must run along. 

Miss Schuyler 

Could you wait a moment? Perhaps you could 
advise us. A reporter forced his way into the 
house. I overheard him. 

{Embarrassed. ) 

It 's too dreadful. 

{Philip moves away.) 

Philip, please stay ! 

{Philip returns.) 

Something must be done ! 

Sally 
I seem to have heard that sentiment before. 

Miss Schuyler 

Last night, after midnight but before Mr. Wayne 
came in, the reporter saw Lord Iffley leaving 
here. 



106 HUSBAND [act ii 

Mrs. Jones 
Really, I 'm surprised at Clora. 

Philip 

It simply isn't true! That's a lie they won't dare 
to print! 

Miss Schuyler 
I think it may be true. 



Sally 



(Sharply?) 
Miss Schuyler ! 



Miss Schuyler 



Oh, no! Not that! Yesterday Mrs. Wayne and I 
had a long talk — about the marriage. She spoke 
to me as no one else ever has — like a sister, a 
good girl friend. She would n't advise me ; but 
I 'm sure that last night she was talking matters 
over with Lord Iffley. 

Mrs. Jones 
Certainly. We must assume that. 



act ii] HUSBAND 107 

Miss Schuyler 

Mr. Wayne has always been against — what 
mother wants. I simply can't let them suffer. So I 
told the reporter how good they have been. He 
was horrid — said that was the campaign story, 
but would n't go down with the people. 

Philip 
Gossiping cats ! 

Miss Schuyler 

The reporter said it was known I had publicly cut 
Mrs. Wayne. 

Philip 
The tom-cats are worst ! 

Miss Schuyler 
{Faintly smiling^) 

Thank you, Philip. My answer was to come to 
call on Clorinda. 

Philip 
You are a sportsman, Muriel — an eternal corker ! 



io8 HUSBAND [act ii 

Sally 

We little mice were just discussing which would 
bell the cat. 

{Kissing her.) 

You have done it ! 

{Enter Clora and Lord Iffley. Miss Schuyler is about 
to kiss Clora.) 

Clora 

{Draws back, but speaks with enthusiasm)} 

It was darling of you to come ! The reporter has 
followed your car. 

Sally 
And has seen you again with Lord Iffley ! 

Iffley 
It was really rippin', Miss Schuyler — Muriel ! 

Miss Schuyler 
{Coldly)) 
Thank you, Edmund — Lord Iffley. 



act ii] HUSBAND 109 

Iffley 

When you go it would help, would n't it, if I were 
to appear out there — put you in your car ? 

Miss Schuyler 
(Significantly.) 

I 'm a little puzzled about the etiquette in such 
matters. We might refer that also to your lawyer. 

Iffley 
(Angrily.) 
Miss Schuyler ! 

(Miss Schuyler turns away and sits with Philip!) 

Iffley 

(Turning to Sally to cover the snub.) 

A cup of tea? And how is your dear husband — 
Alfonso ? 

Sally 
(Significantly!) 
Faithful and true, Lord Iffley. Faithful and true. 



no HUSBAND [act ii 

Iffley 

{Offended) 

Oh! 

(He takes his cup and sits beside Mrs. Jones, who en- 
gages him in conversation) 

Clora 

{To Mrs. Denton) 

The article you proposed — Lord Iffley has no ob- 
jection if Miss Schuyler has none. 

{To Miss Schuyler) 

Mrs. Denton says it would make all the difference 
to Tony if she described in the papers what hap- 
pened yesterday — how Tony entertained you here. 
You understand — a sop to the pee-pul. 

Miss Schuyler 
Gladly — if it would help ! 

Mrs. Denton 

(To Clora) 

The whole matter hinges on making Tony out a 
real democrat. May I put in the shirtsleeves ? 



act ii] HUSBAND in 

Clora 

Paint him, if you will, as a sans culotte ! He would 
go without trousers, if it were n't for the police. 



Mrs. Denton 
And may I add what has happened here just now? 

Clora 
Just now ? 

Mrs. Denton 

The gossip — you know — contrasted with the 
truth. 

Clora 
Contrasted with the truth. Oh, yes ! 

Mrs. Denton 

The whole affair will become ridiculous. The best 
way to win the public is to make it laugh. 

{Low, but with deep rejoicing.} 

You know, dear, what this means to me : interest on 
the mortgage, bills — everything ! You would n't 
believe what they pay for a beat like this. And 



ii2 HUSBAND [act ii 

Archie is so sick, so worried ! In another moment 
I shall be weeping on your neck ! 

[Exit.) 

Philip 

(To Miss Schuyler?) 

You have been magnificent, but — your motor is 
outside, champing its bit. 

Miss Schuyler 

Will you take me out ? 

(They start.) 

Clora 

(Abruptly.) 

The reporter is still there. Lord Iffley will go home 
with you — and mother for chaperone. 

Mrs. Jones 

Surely ! 

Miss Schuyler 

Would n't that look too much like what it is — a 
put-up game ? But if Lord Iffley will go as far as 
the car — 



act ii] HUSBAND 113 

Clora 
{Persistently.) 
I think my plan better — 

{Miss Schuyler does not answer Clora, but goes out with 
Mrs. Jones, Philip, and Lord Iffley ^ 

Sally 
{Her forearms on Clora s shoulder.) 
Sister, sister ! What does it mean ! 

Clora 
{Half to herself as if under a strong spell.) 
For the first time in my life I am really happy ! 

Sally 
I was thinking of Lord Iffley. 

Clora 
And what of him ? 

Sally 

He 's a simple, manly boy. You 're making him 
desperately chappy ! 



H4 HUSBAND [act ii 

Clora 
On my life, you are jealous ! 

Sally 
Clora! Don't be mad. Think, dear — think! 

{Reenter Iffley) 

Clora 
You let Miss Schuyler go — with Philip ! 

Iffley 

It was a dilemma. But she grasped it by the horns. 
She introduced the reporter to us all, then took 
him in the car — left us all flabbergasted on the 
curb. You should have seen the fellow ! Looked 
as if a princess had chosen him at drop-the-hand- 
kerchief. He '11 write what she tells him, all right ! 
She 's got him in her little pocket. By Jove, that 
girl is a ripper. 

Clora 

You are finding that out ? Then, if you are wise, 
you will follow her. 



act ii] HUSBAND 115 

Sally 
(At the door) 

Now, Clora, you are thinking! 
(Exit) 

Clora 
Believe me — before it is too late. 

Iffley 
(Hurt) 
You advise this — now! 

Clora 

It is now for you or never. She has all but broken 
the engagement. 

Iffley 

I will see that she does break it, this very night. 
That 's only square to her. 

Clora 

You know what Muriel is. Coves like you, you say, 
are always marrying money. The thing that still 
may be yours — have you ever imagined anything 
more perfect? 



Ii6 HUSBAND [act ii 

Iffley 

Imagined ! I know it. You, Clorinda — you I You 
buck a felleh up to all that 's best in him, and 
stand there beside him, his comrade. 

Clora 
{Resolutely.) 
Muriel is that — much more. 

Iffley 

You say so. And if she were — to go to her, now ! 
It would be false to myself, false to you, too, Clo- 
rinda — falsest of all to her. 

Clora 
And with me, is there no falsehood, no deceit ? 

Iffley 

Say the word, and, by heaven, there shall be none ! 
I still have the Manor shoot and two thousand 
pounds a year. There we can live our best lives, 
in frankness and honor to each other. 



act ii] HUSBAND 117 

Clora 
And have you no regret ? 

Iffley 
Not one ! 

Clora 

Remember ! If this is the real world, and no fool's 
paradise, we shall look at everything squarely. 
Scandal, an American divorce, remarriage — just 
what will it mean in England ? 

Iffley 
Happiness ! Happiness ! And again happiness ! 

Clora 

But politics — your career! You are "fearfully 
keen about the Empire." 

Iffley 
Without money? 

Clora 
That is bad. But there 's still what you call huntin' ! 



n8 HUSBAND [act ii 

Iffley 

My pious uncle and cousin might not ask us to 
subscribe to the hunt. 

(Smiling?) 

It would n't matter. We could n't afford that 
either. 

Clora 

But if they cut you, the whole county would fol- 
low them ! We should be thrown back on our- 
selves — on the gentry who marry chorus girls. 

Iffley 

For myself, I had n't even thought of it. The 
world and its ways are nothin', now I have you ! 
But you would find it hard. You have thought of 
that? 

Clora 
I have thought of it. 

Iffley 
[Anxiously?) 
And thinking — you have been unhappy? 



act ii] HUSBAND 119 

Clora 

(Abstracted, exalted?) 

I have been living in a new world. But it is the 
real world — the world of freedom ! 

Iffley 

Of freedom? All afternoon, beneath our happi- 
ness, I have felt somethin' sad — an undertone ! 
You don't doubt me — my love ? 

Clora 

( With a little start?) 

A man is always to be doubted. Yet, Edmund, to 
this moment I had forgotten even that ! And I 
don't doubt you now. 

Iffley 

Yet there 's been somethin' ! Tell me. As our love 
is to be honest and free, tell me ! 

Clora 
{Simply?) 
The undertone. To-day as we rode up the Avenue, 



120 HUSBAND [act n 

through the park, my hand was in yours ; my 
heart was in yours. In my soul was the spirit of 
freedom ! Yet, through my veil, through the half- 
shaded windows, I saw the streets I love so well ; 
the rocks and the grass ; the gay autumn trees 
beneath the sparkling sky ; the old friends who 
passed us unheeding. All I have been was there ; 
till to-day all I had hoped for. It was as if my 
lost girlhood looked in at the window, weeping in 
the beautiful sunlight. All day it has been crying 
out to me, dumbly, farewell! 

Iffley 
(Sadly '.) 
And you regret it. 

Clora 

(Bravely?) 

No ! After all, it is the little conventional world I 
am leaving. In my deepest spirit I have not one 
regret ! I am free, free, free ! Yet that word, fare- 
well, has been sounding in my heart. You don't 
understand ? Listen ! As a child I was a prisoner 
— in the nursery, with my playthings. The world 



act ii] HUSBAND 121 

of the young girl called me — the world of free- 
dom. I put away my playthings. Yet as I did so, I 
cried over each one. I have them upstairs in an old 
trunk ; you shall see them. When you came, again 
I was a prisoner. Life had closed round about me ; 
stone walls and iron bars. To-day I have put by my 
later dolls. Always, Edmund, always they will be 
there, laid away in the darkness of my heart. And 
always they will be wet with tears. But now as 
then I follow the call of freedom — without regret. 
Edmund, I love you, love you, love you ! 

(He reaches out to her. She throws wide her arms. He 
embraces her.) 

Iffley 
I pray God I may prove worthy of such love ! 

Clora 
(Standing apart from him, archly.) 
Do you doubt it ? 

Iffley 
(After a slight pause.) 
No. 



122 HUSBAND [act ii 

Clora 

{Detecting the pause. ) 

You do doubt it ! I feel it — you too have the 
undertone ! Truth for truth, Edmund ! To be si- 
lent now is to lie to me ! 

Iffley 
(Hesitates a moment.) 

Tony Wayne is the salt of the earth. I have been 
— I am — his guest. I don't like the trick we 're 
playin' him. 

Clora 
The trick we are playing him ? 



Iffley 
Being the girl you are, you must have thought of 



Clora 

What / am doing — yes ! But you ! What you are 
doing to Tony — always you will think of our love 
as . . . something black, revolting ? The truth ! 
Up to now, you have been honor itself. 



act ii] HUSBAND 123 

Iffley 
Then why distrust me ? 

Clora 

(In sudden illumination.) 

Great heaven, it is because of your honor I dis- 
trust you ! 

(He grasps her by both hands to draw her to him ; but 
with impulsive strength she throws him off.) 

Clora 
No. I must think/ 

Iffley 
(Reaching out both hands.) 
Clorinda — love ! 

Clora 
(Hesitates ; then quickly presses the bell.) 
No ! Leave me ! 

Iffley 

Order me out ! Clorinda ! If we have misgivings 
now, how shall we be brave in the years to come ! 



124 HUSBAND [act ii 

Clora 
That is the question. I must think — think 1 

{Enter Randall?) 

Randall 
Miss Levine to see you, madam. 

Clora 
Show Lord Iffley out. 

Iffley 
{Standing erect, as one used to command?) 

I shall be back before the hour is past. 

(To Randall, who has started to go out) 

Then you will admit me. 

(To Clora, low but firmly?) 

And you will give me your answer — then or never. 
If you love me, you will come ! 

(Enter Miss Levine. She steps aside at the door as 
Iffley passes and looks him up and down. Randall 
announces her, and follows Iffley out.) 



act ii] HUSBAND 125 

Clora 
( Vexed.) 
You should have waited below. 

Miss Levine 
I am assigned to interview you. 

(Shows a circular?) 

The scandal of yesterday, reprinted. On the East 
Side the streets are littered with them. Seeing 
what I have seen, I need scarcely ask you if it is 
true. 

Clora 
(In sudden anger.) 
You will ask me nothing ! 

(She presses the electric button?) 

Miss Levine 

Oh, you will have the butler show me the door ! 
It is not I who have insulted you, but your own 
deeds — something in your heart that is black 
and nauseous. 



126 HUSBAND [act ii 

Clora 
(Pauses, reflecting.) 
If the thing you imagine were true, 

(Acidly) 

I should want above all people to know what you 
think of it. 

Miss Levine 

You mean about that man, about my child ! I will 
tell you ! 

Clora 
Confine ourselves to that man — 
(A slightly ironic accent?) 
Your husband — Miss Levine. 

Miss Levine 
He was n't my husband. And don't call me Miss / 

Clora 
You are known as ... ? 

Miss Levine 
My friends of the Advance call me Comrade Levine. 



act ii] HUSBAND 127 

Clora 

Oh ! Comrade ? 

Miss Levine 

{Hotly) 

With regard to those men, even you can call me 
comrade. 

{Enter Randall) 

Clora 
{Hesitates, looking from one to the other; then) 
Never mind, Randall. 

Randall 
Mr. Wayne would like to see you, madam. 

Clora 
In a moment I shall want to see him. 

{Exit Randall) 

Clora 
{To Miss Levine) 
Does that man still call you comrade ? 



128 HUSBAND [act ii 

Miss Levine 
(In anger, as if hit by a blow?) 
None of your business ! 

Clora 

But it is my business — precisely ! Has he never 
said that there is, in your heart, something . . . 
nauseous ? 

Miss Levine 

Ah ! Mr. Wayne — you are thinking of leaving 
him ! 

Clora 
(Starts, but controls herself and smiles sardonically.) 

Comrade, I am. You offer me the right hand of 
fellowship ? 

(She clasps her hands behind her back, however.) 

Miss Levine 

You women — I marvel 'at your frivolity, your mad- 
ness ! In all the long history of the world, your 
men were the first to build an enduring democracy. 
Out of the wilderness they have created wealth by 



act ii] HUSBAND 129 

millions of millions. Out of primitive settlers and 
ignorant immigrants, they have made the most 
widely educated nation in the world, and the hap- 
piest. In science, literature, and art they are taking 
their place among the foremost. 

Clora 
{Ironically}) 
I gather that you admire American men ? 

Miss Levine 

Socially they are still, so to speak, in their shirt- 
sleeves . . . 

Clora 
That, at least, is true. 

Miss Levine 

The labors of Hercules were not performed in a 
dress suit. 

Clora 

The costume of the Demigod, if I can believe the 
ancient Sculptors, was very negligee. He must have 
been a trial to his wife. 



130 HUSBAND [act ii 

Miss Levine 

At least she knew him for a Demigod ! You hold 
your man by no power of high passion — only by 
his own mistaken fidelity. 

Clora 
Mistaken ? 

Miss Levine 
For what are you ? You are a vampire ! 

Clora 
( With mock resignation) 
I am a rag and a bone and a hank of hair. 

Miss Levine 
Worse ! 

Clora 
Oh! 

{Ironically.) 
I beg pardon if I have presumed. 



act ii] HUSBAND 131 

Miss Levine 

It was a fool who made his prayer to that vam- 
pire. Your man is a man of genius. The mark 
he should make with his life would endure for 
ages — forever ! His children and his children's 
children should replenish the earth with virtue and 
power. Yet he has given himself to you ; and, 
secure in his misplaced fidelity, you are draining 
his last drop of blood. 

Clora 

You are frightfully melodramatic. Yet you set me 
thinking ! 

Miss Levine 
Now you turn to another. 

Clora 
As you did — which is why I am so interested. 

Miss Levine 

Not as I did ! The moment I ceased to love that 
man, I left him, forever. Paugh ! To those who 
love truly there is only one adultery — to turn from 



132 HUSBAND [act ii 

the free kiss of a lover to the enforced embrace of 
a husband ! 

Clora 

Miss Levine ! 

{Controlling herself.) 

I find myself always crying " Miss Levine ! " when 
I am most deeply interested. But you do think so 
clearly ! Tell me — if I leave the man who has 
been so true to me, won't there be in my heart, as 
you say, something nauseous ? 

Miss Levine 

Every soul is its own — its only master ; follow it 
wholly, and you will be wholly free. 

Clora 
Even if I have done wrong ? 

Miss Levine 

Every great right is some one's little wrong. It 
has been said : Strong men digest their sins. 

Clora 

An attractive idea. It explains why they tend to 
grow fat. 



act ii] HUSBAND 133 

{Earnestly.) 

Are you sure I should n't endanger my figure ? 
And they — do they also digest our sins ? 

Miss Levine 

For them as for us, the only truth is freedom. When 
he is giving his whole heart to the work he was 
born for, he will bless you from the depths of his 
soul. 

Clora 

I believe you are right. And I have news. You 
may say Miss Schuyler has broken her engage- 
ment with Lord IrBey. 

Miss Levine 
This is due to Mr. Wayne's intervention ? 

Clora 
{Smiling^) 
And somewhat also to mine ! 

Miss Levine 
{Ironically.) 
I will say so ! 



134 HUSBAND [act ii 

{Seriously.) 

Why, then, 

( Taking the circular from her muff) 

that gives the lie to all this — as far as he is con- 
cerned. 

( They shake hands, and Miss Levine goes out.) 

Clora 
(Pauses, suddenly serious ; then calls down the hall.) 

Tony ! 

Wayne 

( Without.) 

All right ! 

(Enter Wayne.) 

Miss Levine has been giving you a wigging? 

Clora 

Simple hints for daily needs. Now I know why the 
truth is called naked ! I wonder if you agree with 
her? 

Wayne 
My managers have been giving me a wigging. 



act ii] HUSBAND 135 

Clora, dear, I need hardly tell you that I trust 
you. . . . 

Clora 
True ; you have n't bothered your head about me. 

Wayne 
Yet I insist you shall not see Iffley again. 

Clora 
He is coming this afternoon. 

Wayne 
You must tell Randall to send him away. 

Clora 
I will not! 

Wayne 

(Gently?) 

Always I have given you your way. See what 
you have done ! 

Clora 
(Interested.} 

What have I done? 



136 HUSBAND [act ii 

Wayne 

{Gently reproachful.) 

You have made me a public laughing-stock, 
ruined my career, perhaps. 

Clora 

You do agree ! I have thwarted the labors of Her- 
cules, the Demigod. 

Wayne 

{Patiently.) 

Let 's stick to the simple truth — it 's bad enough. 

Clora 

I am a vampire — sucking the last drop of your 
blood. 

Wayne 

( With a sorry laugh.) 

What 's this, Clora ! You melodramatic? 

Clora 
A touch of your own dear Bowery. 



act ii] HUSBAND 137 

Wayne 

Be frank and true with me. You will see I am 
right about Iffley, 

Clora 
( With sudden resolution) 

I will be frank and true ! I love Lord Iffley ; he 
loves me. 

Wayne 

{After a start.) 

Nonsense ! This is another of your exaggerations. 

Clora 
It is true. 

Wayne 

(Incredulous ; placing his hands on her shoulders?) 

You! 

Clora 
{Evading him.) 

Don't touch me ! 

Wayne 

( With deeply wounded affection) 

You — unfaithful ! 



138 HUSBAND [act ii 

Clora 
Yes. 

Wayne 

{With dawning abho?'rence.) 
How long has this been true ? 

Clora 
It seems forever. 

Wayne 

(Relieved) 

Ah ! What you speak of has a very particular time 
and place. This is another of your new touches of 
melodrama ! 

Clora 
Last night, then. 

Wayne 

( Trembling with sudden rage, grasps her by the neck, ) 

You brazen harlot ! You stand there coldly and tell 
me this with a sneer! 

Clora 
{Quivering in his grasp) 
Oh! Oh! 



act ii] HUSBAND 139 

Wayne 

{Releasing her) 

No ! I am wrong. 

{Pause.) 

Forgive me — what I said and what I did. I was 
not myself — the victim of a reflex action. 

Clora 

( Throwing on the table her necklace, which his grasp 
has broken?) 

I was the victim. And what is a reflex action ? 

Wayne 

{Sardonically) 

An action one takes without reflection. 

Clora 
And now that you have reflected ? 

Wayne 

( With conviction.) 

What you say is not true. 



140 HUSBAND [act ii 

Clora 
{Laughing harshly) 

Your reflex actions are not nice ; but they do 
your intelligence more credit ! 

Wayne 
{Firmly) 

I have reasons. 

Clora 

You are a lawyer. You have reasons for every- 
thing — and the best reasons when you are most 
wrong. 

Wayne 
{Quietly) 

Do you remember the months we were engaged ? 

Clora 
This is unheard of ! 

Wayne 
It was the presidential year. 

( Tenderly) 

Always you wore your old mink coat, with a bunch 
of my violets. We watched for the returns together — 



act ii] HUSBAND 141 

on the roof outside your sky cottage ! To this day, 
when I smell the mingled odor of fur and violets 

— on the avenue, on Broadway at matinee time 

— I remember those days, up there alone in the 
sky together. And you, when we catch the old per- 
fume — tears come to your eyes. 

Clora 
It 's not true ! 

Wayne 

I ' ve seen you — within the year ! The old fur coat, 
and the last bunch of violets — we laid them away 
together in the trunk upstairs. When you can go 
to the trunk room and repeat what you have said — 

{He smiles with confidence, reaching out his hand) 

I shall believe you. 

Clora 

( With violence, as if at bay) 

I refuse to take part in absurd mummery. Really — ! 

Wayne 
I have heard you cry wolf before. 
{Turning to the bookcase) 



142 HUSBAND [act ii 

Did it ever occur to you that this is the perfect 
image of your life ? 

Clora 

Tony, if you were n't pitiful, I should find you pro- 
voking ! 

Wayne 

Listen. Here is a shelf of the dear poets. The erotic 
Swinburne, the morbid Verlaine, the lurid Bau- 
delaire. Each volume bears the initials of the giver, 
on an obscure beloved page. They were given you 
the first year we were married — by a soulful 
sophomore who called you his Lady of Pain. Be- 
cause of you he flunked his exams, and was put 
to work by an irate parent. He is now leading a 
double life — on fifteen dollars a week. 

Clora 
(Relapsing into her wifely manner?) 

Tony Wayne, you are mad as your great grand- 
sire ! 

Wayne 
( Unmoved?) 

Here are the modern French dramatists — given 
by an aspiring playwright who used to prove that 



act ii] HUSBAND 143 

we have no drama because American women are 
sexless. He intimated a desire to have you col- 
laborate with him to elevate the stage. 

Clora 
I admit, I escaped that blandishment. 

Wayne 
On every shelf it 's the same. 

{Indicating various sections') 

Evolution ; Abnormal Psychology ; The World's 
Great Religions ; bugs and insects ; Richard Wag- 
ner. Is there one volume which you bought your- 
self, or which represents any interest of your own ? 

Clora 
Mad Anthony Wayne ! What has that to do — 

Wayne 

You accuse me of not sharing your intellectual 
interests. 

{Smiling) 

I 'm only proving you have n't any. Every bit of 
your reading has been personally conducted. You 



144 HUSBAND [act ii 

think the thoughts of the last person who has talked 
to you. You are the Cook's tourist of culture ! 

Clora 
I like your arrogance ! 

Wayne 

Don't take it personally. Ninety-nine women out 
of a hundred are the same. And the hundredth 
is generally a man. I shall begin to take notice of 
their intellects when they no longer wear gowns 
that button up the back. 

Clora 

As a husband, you certainly are a masterpiece ! I 
tell you I have been unfaithful, and you answer 
with a dissertation on the female intellect. 

Wayne 

The point is that you have not been unfaithful. 
Did you ever reflect that in all these books there 
is not one that refers to me ? 

Clora 

Momentous conclusion ! Your interests are all too 
stupid ! 



act ii] HUSBAND 145 

Wayne 

(Lightly, but with deep seriousness}) 

They are — in comparison with me, and our life 
together. Each and every best-young-man you 
have compared to me, to my disadvantage — 
raised the cry of wolf, as you raise it now. One by 
one they have gone, and I still guard my sheep. 

Clora 
{Ironic ; bridling)) 

Your sheep ! 

Wayne 

Really, Clora, when you see all this, does n't it 
make you just a little sheepish? Will you never 
learn ? To any woman, all literature, all art — the 
whole world of ideas and of ideals — is flat and 
unprofitable, compared to real life with the man 
she loves. 

Clora 

With each of your lawyer-like reasons, you are 
only pleading my cause ! How have I had time for 

(A gesture) 

all this ? Because I have had no real life with you / 

(Laughing bitterly.) 



146 HUSBAND [act ii 

Since I must convince you by argument — Great 
Heaven ! — do you find any book that relates to 
Lord Iffley ? Is it ideas I have got from him f 

Wayne 

{Lowering at first, then brightening) 

Yes! 

{Going to the bottom shelf.) 

I was looking up a quotation from Wagner ; hid- 
den behind here I found Burke's Peerage. 

{Producing it.) 

The peerage is scarcely an intellectual interest. But 
it is weighty. This has been a great comfort. 

Clora 
{A touch of gentleness) 

It has pleased heaven, Tony, to dull the shock to 
you by your own stark, raving madness. Yet you 
must face the truth. I have been untrue to you as 
never before. 

Wayne 
{Lowers upon her) 

Speak plainly ! You have betrayed me ! 



act ii] HUSBAND 147 

Clora 
{After a pause.) 
Not yet, but — 

Wayne 
But what ! 

Clora 
You will regard me as no longer your wife. 

Wayne 

{His face contracting to intense rage) 

Clora ! 

Clora 

{Shrinking from him.) 
Tony ! No violence ! 

Wayne 

{His rage turning slowly to abhorrence) 

There shall be none. 

{Pause) 

{Out of deep-wounded affection) 

Oh, Clora, what has come over you ! 



148 HUSBAND [act ii 

Clora 

Love — the right to freedom. You have made me 
a prisoner — the convict of marriage. Love, real 
love, gives me strength to break the bars. 

Wayne 

No, by heaven, not real ! For me your love was 
real. 

Clora 
It might have been — until you became married. 

Wayne 
{Bitterly) 

The truth is, we 've never been married. 

Clora 
{Icily) 

You mean I have no children! 

Wayne 

( Wearily) 

Among many things — yes. 



act ii] HUSBAND 149 

Clora 
(Hotly.) 

You have never been able to provide for them ! 

Wayne 

Once that may have been true. Now it is a lie ! 
Real love ? In the whole life you are leading, not 
one moment is real ! The thing that is wrecking 
our love is nothing but glamour. How can I make 
you see it? Every year you spend more than it 
once cost us both to live — only on gowns and 
jewels. 

Clora 

(Bitterly, sardonically.) 

I see your ideal of the American matron — yours 
and the great Theodore's ! Dowdy Clorinda point- 
ing with pride to a horde of ragamuffins and say- 
ing, " These are my diamond necklaces ! " 

Wayne 

Even that is better than — than the thing you have 
come to ! 

Clora 

You want to keep the name of Mad Anthony 
among the sons of the Revolution. 



150 HUSBAND [act ii 

Wayne 

Our line is far older, yours and mine. You 've read 
Darwin. 

(Glancing toward the bookcase?) 

Did the Man from Cook's tell you what he says of 
real love — free love ? Up from the first little crea- 
ture that crawled out of the ooze and the brine of 
the sea, all our ancestors have loved really and 
freely. Theirs is the true nobility. Out of infinite 
joy — yes, and infinite pain — they have created 
the life of mankind. To do that was the only 
reality, the only freedom. Yet you, in your vanity, 
end it all — the increasing* triumph of the ages ! I 
am proud of my family, but the children of God 
I love. 

(With intense scorn?) 

And to what I love I give my whole heart, my 
whole life — if need be my happiness. 

Clora 

Ah ! Your happiness ! Ha ! Magnificent ! The life, 
the happiness, which you propose to sacrifice are 
mine / 



act ii] HUSBAND 151 

Wayne 

No ! I propose to make your happiness ! In my 
work, you say, I am having the time of my life. 
You have been unhappy because you have shirked 
your work. Live your whole life bravely, in every 
function. Then, in the face of all pain, all hard- 
ship, defeat even, you can't be unhappy ! 

Clora 
{Laughing shrilly)) 

You are a work of art, husband, admirable in your 
perfection. 

( With intense bitterness}) 

Of all arguments to reclaim the wife who has 
wronged you — children ! 

Wayne 

{Lowering up 071 her.) 

Forget the wrong against me. I '11 take care of 
that ! Your fatal error is against yourself. What 
you are is no more shameful than what you have 
been — self-centred, sterile. Always I have felt it 
in our life, a deep, corroding immorality. If I have 



152 HUSBAND [act ii 

loved you less than I might, that, and only that, is 
the reason ! 

Clora 

At last ! Now you have pleaded my whole cause 
for me ! You are the great American man, creat- 
ing the great American nation. I am the Vampire, 
destroying you in every function. Our whole life 
is immoral. It is ! It is ! Tony, to this moment, I 
have had one misgiving. I shrank from any sin 
against you, from making another share that sin. 
You yourself have shown me that the only sin 
would be to remain what is called true to you. If 
I turned from the free kiss of love to the embrace 
of a husband, that would be adultery ! 

(A pause. Wayne is speechless) 

{Enter Randall) 

Randall 
( With a furtive glance at Wayne.) 
Lord Iffley, madam. 

Wayne 
[Quickly.) 

Bring him up ! 



act ii] HUSBAND 153 

{Randall hesitates, looking toward Clora.) 

Clora 
No, Randall, no! 

Wayne 
Bring him up. Bring him up, I tell you ! 

(Exit Randall, with a deprecatory look at Clora.) 

Clora 

(Alarmed.) 

What are you going to do ? 

Wayne 
I don't know. But by God, I '11 do it ! 

(Enter Lord Iffley. Seeing Wayne, he starts?) 

Wayne 

(Calmly in manner, but with intense latent passion?} 

Lord Iffley, if there ever was a man and a gentle- 
man, you are. It is a dirty trick you are playing, 
and a coward's trick. In your heart you know it. 

(Paused 

Do you still ask her to go with you ? 



154 


HUSBAND 




Iffley 


{Resolutely) 




I do. 





[act II 



Wayne 
{Steadying himself on the back of a chair.) 

And you? 

Clora 
{Facing Wayne) 

I shall go with him. 

Wayne 

{An outburst.) 

Then get away from me, both of you ! Out of my 
house ! This hour the whole world shall see you, 
smirched with dirt ! And you shall see the anger 
of the world — the blight of free love ! Out of 
my house, I say ! 

Clora 

{Half shrinks from him, then turns back.) 

But, Tony ! 

{A quick recrudescence of her wifely manner?) 

Your campaign ! It will ruin you now ! Wait ! I 
have managed all that ! 



act ii] HUSBAND 155 

Wayne 
{Furiously.) 

I 've had the last of your managements ! Out of 
my house ! 

{Proudly he rises to his full height, lifting the chair 
and holding it lightly suspended) 

Out, I say ! It is best for you ! 

(Iffley steps in front of Clora ; meets Wayne s glare 
with dignity ; then follows Clora out) 

( Wayne stands rigid a moment, then drops the chair and 
sinks into another, his features tense and set.) 

(In a moment Sally enters. Seeing Wayne, she comes 
to him with a wondering look. She picks up Clora 's 
necklace from the table) 

Sally 

Clora has gone with Lord Iffley ! 

(She throws herself on the floor, her head on Wayne 's 
knees.) 

( Wayne bursts into convulsive tears) 

CURTAIN 



ACT III 



ACT III 

Scene : — The roof of an apartment house, near Madi- 
son Square. The part shown is a corner, surrounded 
by a balustrade, waist-high. To the right, abutting 
the proscenium arch, is a lozv hutch or cottage of cor- 
rugated iron. To the left, also abutting the prosce- 
niurn arch, is an electric hoarding — a coarse wire 
net, supporting huge letters, the fronts of which are 
brilliantly illuminated. The back of the hoarding is 
to the stage, and only a faint glow indicates the 
glaring light at the front. 

A door of the cottage gives the only entrance to the stage, 
though other parts of the roof may be reached around 
the corner. The cottage window is neatly curtained, 
and is fronted by a window-box of evergreens. The 
back of the hoarding is partly screened by a row of 
tall bay trees. In the centre of the scene is a rug, 
with easy chairs and a table. 

It is night, and the neighboring buildings, far below the 
level of the roof, are seen in deep shadow, through 
the openings of the balustrade. In the middle dis- 
tance is the tower of Madison Square Garden, the 
belfry outlined in lights. Beyond is the East River, 
spanned by arches of minute lights, which indicate 
the Brooklyn and the Williamsburg bridges. 



160 HUSBAND [act hi 

Enter Sally, carrying a tray with a coffee machine, four 
small cups, and a box of cigarettes. Mrs. Jones and 
Clora follozv. Clora s dress, tJwugli neatly cut and 
tasteful, is ratJier faded, and of a style long out- 
moded : it contrasts markedly with the dresses of 
her mother and sister, which are fresh and modish. 
Clora wears an old mink coat, Sally sables. 

Sally 

{Lights the alcohol lamp and screejis it from the air. 
Then she speaks to an imaginary butler, in the tones 
of burlesque, but with a touch of acerbity.) 

That will do, Randall. We will serve the coffee 
ourselves. 

{She throws back her shoulders slightly, drops her 
middle fingers to the seams of imaginary trousers, and 
walks formally toward the door. Then she comes 
back to the table.) 

Much more truly smart, don't you think, to be free 
of the eternal presence of servants ? 

Clora 

( With a toucli of exasperation^) 

If that is a joke, Sally, it has gone far enough. 
You have given us excellent imitations of cook, 



act in] HUSBAND 161 

maid, and butler ; but the dinner was as bad as 
ever we had here in the old days. 

Mrs. Jones 

I like that ! Before you married, you used to call 
this high life. It 's the most luxurious apartment 
in New York. Who else has a garden terrace in 
the heart of the shopping district ? 

Sally 

( With a searching glance at Clora.) 

If you don't prefer high life, why have you come 
back to it? 

Clora 
(Coldly.) 
I have told you. 

Mrs. Jones 

( With earnest irony.) 

You have left the house to Tony for his head- 
quarters — to save campaign expenses ! A very 
good story for the papers, but — 



162 HUSBAND [act hi 

Sally 

It has made you out a model wife — coupled with 
that other story of how you helped Tony to save 
an American heiress from a ghoulish, fortune-hunt- 
ing Briton. And you've gone back to wearing 
your old trousseau things. Why not publish that 
also as a proof of your devotion to Tony ? 

Clora 
(Coldly.) 

Why not ? 

Sally 

Why, when you left, was he all broken up ? Why 
does he never come here, and why does Lord 
Iffley come — for coffee and cigarettes ? Why are 
you always angry when I speak of it ? 

Mrs. Jones 
(Severely.) 

My child, it 's all a pretense — an obvious pretense. 

Clora 
(Reflecting a moment.) 
Yes. It is. 



act in] HUSBAND 163 

Mrs. Jones 
A shameful pretense ! 

Clora 
Grandmamma ! 

Mrs. Jones 
Then why have you not been frank with us? 

Clora 

I was afraid the newspapers would ask questions, 
and I wanted to take the necessary lies on my own 
shoulders. When I told Tony about — about Lord 
Iffley, he went into a rage, and turned me out of 
the house. 

Sally 
Ah ! Naturally. 

Clora 

He was quite natural. He said the whole world 
should see me, smirched with dirt. 

Mrs. Jones 
That, my child, is what it will amount to, if . . . 



164 HUSBAND [act in 

Clora 
{Hotly) 

There is no if ! That is what we expected — what 
we still expect. Yet the scandal would have hurt 
Tony's campaign. He did his best to ruin his last 
chance. But / have managed ! Now there is no 
more need of pretense. Every vote is cast. In an 
hour we shall know the result. 

Sally 

[Pouring the coffee, which is boiling) 

And you, Clora ? 

Clora 

{Assuming a matt er-of fact tone) 

I have engaged my berth to Sioux Falls. I shall 
marry Edmund and go to England. 

Sally 
I knew it ! 

Mrs. Jones 
Clora ! 

{More and more deeply shocked) 

I can't believe it of you ! You, Clora — you ! OufI! 
It gives me a chill. 



act in] HUSBAND 165 

{Rising determinedly) 

I '11 see you alone to-night. We'll talk of this I 

Clora 

{Quickly.) 

Read me the moral law ? I simply won't have it ! 

Mrs. Jones 
{Sternly) 

You have used me, used your innocent sister, to 
protect you against scandal. You have made us 
accomplices in your shame ! I will make you 
acknowledge the insult to both of us, and the sin 
in your own heart ! 

{Exit.) 

Clora 

{Controlling herself, speaks kindly to Sally) 

Edmund wants you to live with us — as you did 
with Tony. 

Sally 

Will it be just like that? 

{She offers Clora the cigarettes) 

They are de rigueur — in certain English sets. 



166 HUSBAND [act hi 

Clora 
{Inwardly wincing) 
You mean that decent people there will cut us. 

Sally 

Lord Iffley is very kind. But with his fortune 

(A slightly iro7iic emphasis) 

won't he have his hands full, providing for your 
simple tastes ? Thank you, I will stay with Maysie. 

Clora 

( Tenderly) 

Little sister, I want you to understand — I trust 
you to understand ! The world is conventional in 
its judgments, so narrow and so small ! But you 
are not so. Think, and you will see that what we 
are doing, Edmund and I, is the big thing, the 
just thing — the only right thing! 

Sally 
/think. But I don't see it. 



act in] HUSBAND 167 

Clora 

Since I don't love Tony, to live with him can be 
only sinful. He himself saw that ! And since I do 
love Edmund, oh, so deeply, as he loves me, not 
to go with him, whatever it costs us in happiness 
— don't you see ? — it would be cowardice ! 

Sally 

I am still thinking. You took everything from Tony. 
You took his love — and he loves you very deeply. 
You took his money, for yourself and for me. To 
provide for us, he gave up all leisure and enjoy- 
ment — became tired and dull. You gave him 
nothing — nothing but contempt for his dullness. 
Was that "right"? 

Clora 
No. And so I shan't do so any more. 
{Gently pleading?) 
You will come — let us do what we can for you ? 

Sally 
Like the world, I'mso narrow and small. 



168 HUSBAND [act in 

Clora 

Perhaps things won't turn out so badly in Eng- 
land. If we are able — to bring you out properly . . . 

Sally 

I have broken Tony's bread and eaten his salt. / 
can't leave him in the lurch. I shall play the game. 

Clora 
(Looking about with unconscious disdain.) 
You will stay here? 

Sally 

(Acidly.) 

Our neighbors are housemaids To receive callers 
I have the entrance hall and the assistance of bell- 
hops. Respectability comes high ; but we must 
have it. I '11 stick to Alfonso and love in a sky 
cottage. We 're hopelessly conventional, Alfonso 
and I. 

Clora 
(Patting her head patiently^ 
Don't be hard on me, Sis . . . 



act in] HUSBAND 169 

{Sally shrugs her shoulders ; then sits motionless and 
obdurate. Clora turns from her, offended, and defi- 
antly lights a cigarette. She holds it awkwardly 
between her thumb and first finger. It goes out. She 
throws it down.) 

Pah! 

(She clears the air about her with her handkerchief and 
sips her coffee.) 

Sally 

If you will hold it like a stick of candy ! 

(She takes the cigarette, presses out the flatness be- 
tween thumb and finger, taps the end against her 
thumb-nail, and then, lighting it, leans back and 
puts her slippered toes against the table-top?) 

The latest attitude from Sioux Falls. 
(Puffs) 

(A horn toots off stage. Enter Miss Schuyler and 
Philip Roberts in motoring furs. He has a tin horn 
and she a feather tickler. The clothes of both are 
sifted fid I of variegated tissue-paper confetti?) 

(Sally drops her toes from the table, and hides her cigar- 
ette) 



170 HUSBAND [act hi 

Miss Schuyler 
{Comes impulsively to Clora, suffusing happiness.) 
Congratulate us, dearest. We 're engaged ! 

Clora 
Miss Schuyler ! Muriel ! When did this happen ? 

Miss Schuyler 
(To Philip) 

When did it happen ? 

Philip 
(To Clora) 

How did you come to think of such a question ! 

( To Muriel) 

In the conservatory, eh ? 

Miss Schuyler 

We may as well call it then. Mother had been 
horrid to me — said I 'd made her a laughing-stock 
and myself a scandal. Philip came and was so 
true and kind that I found myself crying. Then — 

(A laugh of happy embarrassment) 



act in] HUSBAND 171 

People don't have to say such an awful lot, to be 

engaged. 

Philip 

Fact is, before I knew it, I had got myself horribly 
compromised. 

Miss Schuyler 

{Thrusting her tickler in his face .) 

Philip ! 

Sally 

{Having joined them.) 

I am so glad ! Oh, I am so glad ! 

{Impulsively she kisses Miss Schuyler) 

Miss Schuyler 
{Taking Philip close by the arm) 

We 've come to tell you first of all. It was you, 
dear, who made the match ! 

Clora 
I ! What does your mother say ! 

Miss Schuyler 

Mother is at Lakewood. Neurasthenia — otherwise 
known as exhaustion of the social nerve. 



172 HUSBAND [act hi 

Philip 

There *s another horrible jolt coming to mother. 
We told Mr. Schuyler. He promised to administer 
the jolt. 

Miss Schuyler 

And when father does say something, it goes 
through. 

{Philip turns his back and gives a long toot on his 
horn.) 

Dearest, when I came to you that day I was such 
a silly ! I knew nothing of life — of its evil or of 
its good. Of my own heart — of what love should 
be — I knew nothing at all whatever ! You, with 
your few, dear, sisterly words, told me everything. 
Oh, yes ! I know it all now ! I know that life is 
black, black, black. But I also know that it may 
be sweet and pure — as it is for you ! Clorinda, 
dearest — may I call you so ? — if you knew what 
it has meant to me, will always mean, to know 
you — your sweetness and goodness ! 

Clora 
( Without conviction.) 

Thank you, Miss Schuyler. 



act in] HUSBAND 173 

{Forcing the note of conviction^) 
Thank you, Muriel. 

Miss Schuyler 

And that brave big husband of yours ! Realizing 
what you have been to me, I know something 
of what you are to him. You have followed the 
papers ? 

Clora 
No. That is, I Ve only glanced at them. 

Philip 
It 's the reporters, dear, who come to her for news. 

Miss Schuyler 

How stupid of me ! And what he is doing — you 
hear it all, at once, from him. Will he win ? We have 
gone from bulletin to bulletin — we two together 
in the limousine. 

Clora 
Then you can best tell me. 



174 HUSBAND [act hi 

Philip 

Even his enemies admit that he 's made the closest 
kind of a fight. The shouting in the street is all 
for Tony. It depends on the effect of these rotten 
circulars. If people believe Tony 's been playing 
double with rich and poor, he 's done for. If they 
believe the truth, he '11 win. And I hope they '11 
take his word before that of anonymous black- 
guards. 

Miss Schuyler 

Which are they believing ? Of course he 's had you 
up on the telephone. 

Clora 
No — not yet. 

Miss Schuyler 

He has n't time ? Then it must be close ! It has all 
been so exciting! And his speeches — the way he 
talks about our country, our people ! I had to take 
two handkerchiefs — just like a perfectly splendid 
matinee. But of course you 've heard him ! 

Clora 
Not in this campaign. 



act in] HUSBAND 175 

Miss Schuyler 

He has pathos, passion — even the note of tragedy. 
That 's what the paper says ! 

Clora 
Really, I had n't heard. 

Miss Schuyler 
I suppose he 's too modest to say it himself. 

{To Philip) 

Promise me, dear, you '11 never be as modest as 
that! 

{To Clora) 

But he does tell you how much he owes to you ? 

Clora 
No — in the present case. 

Sally 
( With sub-acid satire.) 

Yet in the present case, Clora, I think you may 
admit, without immodesty, that you have aroused 
his passion and the note of tragedy. 



176 HUSBAND [act hi 

Miss Schuyler 
{Pauses and looks from Sally to Clora) 
Is there anything wrong ? 

Clora 
Wrong ? 

Miss Schuyler 

You don't seem excited at all. And, when I told 
my news, your sister kissed me. 

Clora 
Dear child, my whole heart goes out to you. 

{She kisses her.) 

It touches me — I can't tell you how much — to 
think that / have had any part in bringing you 
such happiness. 

{She dashes a tear from Jier eye, smiling) 

You see, I am not at all as calm as you think. 

{Enter Mrs. Denton) 

Mrs. Denton 
I 've come to interview you, Clora. 



act in] HUSBAND 177 

Clora 

From the other side, Philip, you can see the tower 
of the Times. Look for the searchlight. If Tony 
is elected, it will flash north : if not, south. 

(To Sally.) 

Do get them away. Edmund will be here . . . 

{Philip, Miss Schuyler and Sally pass round the corner 
of the cottage.) 

Mrs. Denton 

Listen — and forgive me ! My editor thinks you 
are going to get a divorce and marry Lord Iffley. 

Clora 

(Simply?) 

He is mistaken. 

Mrs. Denton 

May I advise you? The time is past when the 
truth can hurt Tony. 

Clora 
But if it is n't the truth ? 



178 HUSBAND [act hi 

Mrs. Denton 
(Surveying her costume) 
Why have you on that old gown ? 

Clora 
Why not? 

Mrs. Denton 

It 's years out of fashion — part of your trousseau. 

Clora 
(Coldly.) 

And what then ? 

Mrs. Denton 

You are the squarest woman I ever knew, Having 
left Tony, you are too honest — and too proud — 
to keep wearing the things he paid for. 

Clora 
Sherlock Holmes ! 

(Enter Mrs. Jones carrying a small florists box. She 
greets Mrs. Denton and places the box on the table 
beside Clora) 

Alice is interviewing me, grandmem. 



act in] HUSBAND 179 

Mrs. Jones 

(Significantly^) 

I will interview you later. 

(Exit) 

Mrs. Denton 

(Taking Clora by the lapel of her coat.) 

The old mink, too ! Sally is wearing the sables 
Tony gave her. Where are yours ? 

(Clora opens the florist } s box.) 

And violets ! 

(On a sudden thought) 

If what you say is true, Clora dear, they will be 
from Tony. How often I 've seen you in this coat, 
with just such a bunch of his violets ! If /am right, 
they will be from Lord Iffley. 

Clora 
(Forcing a smiled) 

Sherlock Holmes would be green with envy ! Only 
this is real life. 

Mrs. Denton 
Ah, Clora ! Listen ! This story — if it comes out 



180 HUSBAND [act hi 

late to-night, the election news will crowd it down 
to half a column. After that — if you let me have 
it exclusively now — the other papers, out of jeal- 
ousy, will give it less prominence. 

Clora 

{After a paused) 

It 's all true. 

Mrs. Denton 

Tony is to get the divorce ? 

Clora 

As yet he has no grounds. I shall get it on the 
ground that he has forbidden me his home — re- 
fused support. 

(She buttons tight her fur coat.) 

At Sioux Falls, do you suppose they all blossom 
out in their faded trousseaux ? It will be a gay life ! 

(She takes the violets out of the box.) 

Mrs. Denton 

Furs and violets. How often I 've seen you like 
this with Tony! Oh, Clora! The very perfume 
should recall you. 



act in] HUSBAND 181 

Clora 

(Sniffs.) 

The fur — camphor. The moth-balls of matrimony! 
The violets — are not Tony's violets. 

(She puts them back in the box, however?) 

(Miss Schuyler, Sally \ and Philip reenter. They are in 
high spirits.) 

Miss Schuyler 

It's as dark there as here. 

(Indicating the Garden tower)) 

What can be happening ! We 're off to the 
bulletins. It 's such fun ! They toot into the car 
in our ears, tickle our noses ! I never dreamed 
I could be so near so many jolly people ! I want 
to tell them all, brag to them — I know their 
Tony ! 

(She reaches into the pockets of Philip 's overcoat with 
both hands and showers confetti over Clora?) 

To think I ever intended to leave my country for 
— forever ! 

(Miss Schuyler and Philip go out. Sally follows?) 



1 82 HUSBAND [act hi 

Mrs. Denton 
Clora, Clora ! What you are leaving forever ! . . . 

Clora 
Tony said himself I was ruining his career. 

Mrs. Denton 

You were. Does it follow that you must ruin his 
life! Tony is suffering — alone. And Miss Levine ! 
He may lose to-night; but he has a future — a 
great work in the world. And he should do it 
greatly ! But a woman like that would drag him 
down to her life of the Ghetto ! She is following 
him everywhere. The papers are remarking it — 
with something between the lines. 

Clora 
That 's why I stopped reading them. 

Mrs. Denton 
Then you do still care what happens to Tony ! 

Clora 
In a way, no doubt. 



act in] HUSBAND 183 

Mrs. Denton 
Down deep in your heart, you care ! 

Clora 

Say I do love Tony — love him as I should love a 
child — a big, helpless boy ! What then ? He has 
failed to make me in love ! 

Mrs. Denton 
In love? And what of it? 

Clora 

What of it? All that for years I have hungered 
for, in a flash it is mine. If you could know him 
as he is — so light, so gay, so generously devoted ; 
ready to give over the whole great world he lives 
in, with no regret but for what /am losing. Every 
moment he envelops, suffuses, with his tenderness, 
his charm. It is a spell, Alice — a spell that will 
last forever ! I shall be everything to him I have 
not been to Tony. 

Mrs. Denton 
And what you have been to Tony ? Do you forget 



1 84 HUSBAND [act hi 

how we talked — how we felt ! — in those old days 
of furs and violets ? 

Clora 
( Wincing.) 

Tony was different ! 

Mrs. Denton 

It is Lord Iffley who is different. That is his one 
great hold on you — his idle gayety, his charm. 

Clora 

At heart he is also a man — honest, intelligent, 
ambitious ! 

Mrs. Denton 

Yes! But what has it meant to him — being in 
love? Since he has known you he has changed. 
Look into the sacrifice of his life, and yours, and 
you will find it shallow enough. 

Clora 
His sacrifice — shallow ! 

Mrs. Denton 
He hoped to put so much into his life. Such a 



act in] HUSBAND 185 

marriage, in England, will put him down and out. 
He will be just another idle Englishman who has 
given his manhood for the passion of a moment. 

(She lays her palms on Clora? s shoulders.) 

Forgive me. It is the truth! You will ruin not 
one man but two. Good-by. 

{At the door.) 

Oh, Clora ! 

(Exit) 

(Clora stands at the table, dazed. Mechanically she 
takes the violets and puts them in her jacket ; then f 
realizing with a start, throws them down.) 

(Enter Iffley. He wears a long, light overcoat with a 
wide, black band on the arm. He is in a breeze of 
high spirits) 

Iffley 
(Taking her hands.) 

I have been so hungry — out of my senses, almost, 
with love of you ! Every day that brings us nearer 
doubles up my surTerin' — until, by Jove, I think I 
should die, if I did n't double up my happiness, 
too ! All day I have felt that I had you tucked 



186 HUSBAND [act hi 

away, warm and throbbin', inside my great-coat. 
All day I have heard your voice — a song in my 
heart ! 

Clora 

I have been needing you as never before — need- 
ing your love ! 

(Deliberately she takes the violets, buries her face in 
them, and thrusts them into her jacket) 

I thought I was yours already. To-night, in this 
very last hour, I have sounded depth after depth 
of surrender. 

Iffley 
{Eagerly) 

Then you will! Your ticket — I've arranged the 
stop-over. 

(A gleam in his eye) 

I shall be there before you. 

(He seizes her as if to hold her in a long embrace) 

Clora 
(Gently forcing herself apart from him) 
I meant a different surrender. 



act in] HUSBAND 187 

Iffley 

But in our hearts we are married already. You 
promised . . . 

Clora 

Since you insisted. But to-night I am facing a 
bigger, yes, a deeper, a harder surrender. You will 
have to be very good. They have n't been nice to 
me. 

Iffley 
They? 

Clora 

Every one who knows is against me. And Muriel 
Schuyler ! She kissed me and spoke of my good- 
ness and purity. I had n't had the heart to kiss her ! 
Why could n't I ? More than anything else that 
hurt me. It still hurts! Oh, Edmund! Am I not 
good and pure ? 

(On a sudden thought 1) 

She has just gone down. She did n't meet yon here ! 

Iffley 

I only saw Mrs. Denton — and Sally in the tele- 
phone booth. 



1 88 HUSBAND [act in 

Clora 
Sally? 

Iffley 

The elevator boy said she was calling up Wayne 
— for news of the election, he hoped. 

Clora 
Sally is bitter — bitter! 

Iffley 
But we have plans for Sally, 

Clora 

She has refused to — to be a burden. That is my 
one great regret. 

Iffley 
Jove, I 'd forgotten ! 
{He laughs happily.) 
I have news, too ! 
{Indicating the band on his arm.) 

Clora 
Bad news ! 



act in] HUSBAND 189 

Iffley 

{Suffusing exultation) 

That 's what kept me so late. The Earl and my 
cousin are dead. 

Clora 
Dead ! 

Iffley 

I confirmed it over the cable. The earldom is ours. 
We're rich beyond the dreams of — of bio win' it 
in! 

Clora 

Dead, Edmund — both of them ? 

Iffley 

Cousin let his horse chuck him at a stone fence. 
Uncle had a weak heart, and the shock carried him 
off. Perhaps Sally will come with us now, eh ? 

Clora 

(Shocked) 

But, Edmund ! They are your nearest of kin — and 
dead ! 



190 HUSBAND [act hi 

Iffley 

{Sitting on the table, his arms about her shoulders)} 

I know I seem shockin' callous. But they hated me 
worse than I hated them, and with less cause. Oh, 

{Indicating the band on his arm) 

I '11 do the proper in public. But between our- 
selves, as you say, the reality of things ! You had 
one great regret ; it has vanished ! By Jove, when 
the fellehs see the good sort Sally is, she can bag 
the man she chooses ! 

Clora 

But . . . Sally ! And if people cut us, how could 
we bring her out ? 

Iffley 

(Still smiling broadly) 

Cut me ! Not on your little life ! You 've heard of 
the divinity that hedges a king? Well, there's a 
clinkin' high curbstone round an earl. Now I have 
money and the title, I can do anything I like. Do 
you know what that uncle of mine did ? He was a 
godly soul, and got the whole country-side singin' 
psalms through their noses. 



act in] HUSBAND 191 

Clora 

And we, being quite godless, will create a furore 
of divorce and remarriage. 

Iffley 

The American idea ! Susan falls ; Sioux Falls ; Sue 
is on her feet again, straight as ever ! 

(He laughs?) 

Clora 

(Earnestly?) 

Edmund, the whole situation has become serious. 

Iffley 

(Swinging his leg lightly?) 

Serious ! I should say it has ! 

(Smiling broadly, he takes a large handkerchief with 
a wide black border, puts it in his outside breast- 
pocket and taps the corners, which show?) 

We agreed to despise what they say — the little 
conventional world. Now, by Jove, we can do it ! 

Clora 
Little ? Ah, it 's bigger than I knew ! To-night I 



192 HUSBAND [act in 

have seen it in my heart — in the hearts of others. 
Sally won't go with us : I know her. She is loyal 
to Tony. And living here, how will she ever be 
married? Our happiness will mean the waste of 
her life, perhaps. Grandmem has given her whole 
heart to us, was so proud of me ! I have robbed 
her of love and pride — have left her shame and 
bitterness. Until to-night I have thought only of 
what / am losing — the world was little, com- 
pared to you ! Now I see what I am taking from 
them, and we are as nothing, you and I. 

{Pause. Iffley has become serious.) 

And Tony — they say I 'm ruining his life. Never 
forget, Edmund, that once I loved him ! 

Iffley 

Good God ! Do you think I 'm likely to forget ! 

(Facing her with evident suffering) 

What do you mean ! Loved him once ? You love 
him still ! The whole world lies open before us, 
and you talk of — of him / 

Clora 
Edmund! You — jealous! 



act in] HUSBAND 193 

Iffley 

At the thought of — of him, God knows I suffer. 

( With dignity and impetuous honesty?) 

I am jealous ! And I have cause, if you have one 
regret ! Look into your heart, I beg yon ! Don't let 
our whole life be a torture. 

Clora 

{Bravely and with conviction?) 

No, Edmund. It is fate. Only, all our lives we must 
remember this : I am bound by a double bond to 
bring you happiness. If ever I find I have not — 
that I 've spoiled your life, too . . . Ah, you see, 
dear . . . 

Iffley 
If that is all — you are makirt my life ! 

Clora 
(Brightening.) 

In one respect your news is magnificent ! The way 
is open again to your career. You have thought of 
that? 



194 HUSBAND [act hi 

Iffley 

{Looks at Iter a moment, reflecting seriously ; then, as- 
suming the note of gayety that at first was natural.) 

Career ? I did n't know I had any. 

Clora 

It is you who said it. You are fearfully keen about 
the Empire. Think of the position, the influence 
we shall have ! You may be — who knows ? — 
Prime Minister. 

Iffley 

Nonsense ! Too much fag. As you say here, nothin' 
doin'. 

Clora 

(Disappointed ; vexed.) 

In America, we say our " i-n-g." 

Iffley 
( With studious carelessness^) 
Since you 're so jolly partic'lar, no\h-ing do-ing ! 

Clora 
Dear, we must be serious. 



act in] HUSBAND 195 

Iffley 

Never in my life more serious. Politics ! Have you 
ever noticed that General Elections have a way of 
fallin' in the very cream of the huntin' season? 

Clora 
But you meant what you said — honestly ? 

Iffley 
(Seriously.) 

Why, yes. Of course. 

Clora 
Then why pretend you are — shallow/ 

Iffley 
(Piqued.) 

Eh! Shallow? 

(Evasively.) 

Oh, I don't know. A rush of prosperity to the 
head. 

Clora 

Then you will think seriously of a career — honor 
bright ? 



196 HUSBAND [act hi 

Iffley 

{Tenderly?) 

Clorinda, dear! The fact is, I was pretendin'. A 
career is n't possible ! Socially anythin* goes — 
if you have a title, and the money to make it. But 
— you force me to say it : I must be square with 
you ! Politics is different. The British public is 
dead set against — you know — the sort of thing 
we 're goin' in for. 

Clora 
{Dashed.) 

And I meant to be so good for you ! 

Iffley 
{Kindly.) 

Impossible. I always hate things that are good 
for me. 

Clora 
Ah, Edmund, it is my one regret ! 

Iffley 

Nonsense, dear ! / don't care. Coves like us, you 
know, with everything in the world to make us 



act in] HUSBAND 197 

happy — we 'd just have to force ourselves to be 

serious. 

Clora 

But I am serious. I shall do my duty. 

Iffley 
Your duty ? 

(Interested) 

You mean — the heir to the earldom? 

Clora 
(Shocked}) 

Edmund ! Oh — oh! I meant — there are so many 
ways I have failed Tony. I want to be everything 
to you I have not been to him. 

Iffley 

{Still following his own idea) 

That 's jolly fine of you — splendid ! 

{On a sndden recollectio7i.) 

But I thought you did n't go in for that sort of 

thing. 

Clora 

You are horribly literal ! 

(Piqued at what he has just said) 



198 HUSBAND [act hi 

But why shouldn't I — if, as you say, it 's jolly 
fine, splendid? 

Iffley 

( Uneasily) 

Well, y' see . . . Why, y' know . . . Hang it, 
you strike me as the sort of woman that 's too 
fine, too intellectual and all that, to be interfered 
with, upset . . . 

Clora 
(Still on the defensive) 

After what you are giving up for me, do you 
think there 's anything I would n't do that was 
" Jolly fine, splendid ! " 

Iffley 

{Looks at her uneasily ', pauses, then again forces the 
note of carelessness.) 

Duty ! Not to my title ! The first earl, my great 
grandfather, was a brewer — a rum old sort. You 
know what they say — the Peerage has become 
the Beerage! Duty? Why, when Mad Anthony 
Wayne was fighting us British — and lickin' us, 



act in] HUSBAND 199 

too ! — my illustrious forbear was messin' round 
his beer vats. 

Clora 

(Annoyed, she tucks the corners of his pocket handker- 
chief out of sight.) 

It is no pretense. You are shallow — vapid. 

Iffley 
(Also annoyed.) 

I don't like the way you express yourself. Did you 
care such an awful lot for Tony Wayne's career, 
for his family ? 

Clora 

(Excitedly.) 

You fling that reproach at me — you ! 

Iffley 
(Attempting to embrace her.) 

Don't, don't ! In a moment, good Lord, we shall 
be quarrelin'. 

Clora 
(A ngrily ; struggling free. ) 
Don't touch me ! Vapid ? You are positively inane ! 



200 HUSBAND [act hi 

Iffley 
(Stung to the quick.) 

And you are a little she devil ! 

{Controlling himself in a measure) 

Clorinda, dear ! Pull yourself in ! We 're of! on 
the same sort of go — you know — with him ! 

Clora 
Him? Always him. I forbid you! 

Iffley 

I might have known it ! This is serious ! You 
have all the charm of the American girl — and 
her one great foible. 

(Friendly y satirical ; yet with deep latent seriousness) 

You are a feahful tyrant ! You even have a han- 
kerin' to change my speakin' English. It don't 
make for happiness — not in the long run, on 
either side. And we We goin' to be happy. 

(Calmly but very firmly) 

Every household has a mistress. But every couple 
has a master. 



act in] HUSBAND 201 

Clora 
( With mounting spirit.) 

My master ! That y s your idea of real love, free 
love ! Ah, magnificent ! Rule, Britannia ! Britan- 
nia rules the wyves ! 

Iffley 
The national motto. Rule a wife and have a wife. 

Clora 

You are an Englishman. Always that has been 
my one regret. 

Iffley 
{Losing his temper?) 

Your one regret ! Already you 've told me five of 
'em. We 've come into an earldom, and you take 
the hair off my head. You regret everything but 
your own insensate willfulness. 

Clora 
(As if with set teeth?) 

Let me tell you, Lord Edmund Cecil Alexander 
Iffley, Viscount Langdune, and Earl of Hunting- 



202 HUSBAND [act m 

ton, you are not my master ! You have n't one 
decent aspiration. You don't even respect me ! 

Iffley 
{Deeply indignant!) 

By Heaven, you are unjust! 

Clora 

Then why do you make light of — of my obvious 
duty ! Do you want to make me a traitor to every 
womanly impulse! 

Iffley 

You know why we've quarreled — vulgar middle- 
class quarrel? 

Clora 
Vulgar? Middle class? 

Iffley 

Because I tried not to wound you. But — since 
you make me ! In England I don't know if there 
are such divorces. You remember Stanhope and 
his American wife? Their children, it turned out, 
were illegitimate beggars. 



act in] HUSBAND 203 

Clora 
{Shocked ; deeply wounded) 

Oh! It is true ! I 'm ruining your life as I ruined 
Tony's ! 

Iffley 

You are talkin' an awful lot of rot in a manner 
quite excited. 

Clora 

(Turning away from him.) 

For the first time I see the whole thing clearly ! 
It's all ^between us ! I should ruin you in every 
manly ambition. You yourself confess it ! 

(She pauses and faces him, inquiringly. Iffley is em- 
barrassed, silent) 

If there is any other way — 

(Coming toward him, appealingly) 

tell me ? 

(She pauses. Reluctantly, Iffley shakes his head.) 

What are you thinking ? Tell me ! 

Iffley 
There is no other way . . . 



204 HUSBAND [act hi 

Clora 
Then it is all off ! 

Iffley 

Unless . . . unless we made no pretense of mar- 
ry in*. 

Clora 
How — no pretense ? 

Iffley 

The British Public, you know — what it don't 
know never hurts you. 

Clora 
(Mystified.) 

You mean a secret marriage ? 

Iffley 
{Uneasily.) 

Well, as I say, I 'm afraid no real marriage is pos- 
sible. And, anyway, we might n't be able to keep 
it secret. 

Clora 
[Stunned.) 

You mean — I 'm to live with you . . . without . . . ! 



act in] HUSBAND 205 

Iffley 

Since you insist on my career — it is the only 
way ; but, sweetheart, why insist ! / don't care. 



Clora 

(An outcry.) 

Oh, monstrous! 

(She strides away from him.) 

To live a sneaking life, in fear and shame — your 
mistress / 

Iffley 

Dearest — dearest! It's often done — the easiest 
thing in the world to carry it off ! You would go 
everywhere. I could tell you a dozen people who ' ve 
done it. Compared to all we 've dreamed of, such 
a life would be freedom itself. Instead of the old 
shooting-box and two thousand a year, outcast, 
disclassed — think of it ! — wealth, a career, the 
whole great world ! 

Clora 
(Striding up and down like a lioness.) 
Have your career without me ! On your ancestral 



206 HUSBAND [act hi 

estate your legal wife, the Countess, and your lord- 
ling heirs ! You propose that — to me ! Oh ! Oh ! 

Iffley 
{Following her up and down with intense indignation) 
I never proposed it ! 

Clora 
Did I propose it ? Blackguard ! 

Iffley 

No one proposed it ! You put the case up to me, 
and I told you the honest truth. Blackguard ? Any 
other felleh would have sidestepped all that — said 
nothin', and led you into a fool's paradise. I have 
been honest with you — showed you the whole 
truth as it is ! And you call me blackguard ! 

Clora 

But you urged it — pleaded the honorable exam- 
ple of your friends . . . Oh, Edmund ! You / 

Iffley 
( With increasing indignation.) 
I urged nothin' ! But you — you prate of bein' com- 



act in] HUSBAND 207 

rades, and when I am frank and square with you, 
you turn on me like a tiger cat. You live in a hazy 
dream of self-sacrifice, and when you see the thing 
we're doin' without blinders, you shy into the 
ditch. You prattle of free love, of the reality of 
things. An empty rigamarole ! You have as much 
sense of it all as a mechanical doll squeaking 
ma-ma ! You advanced ? You intellectual ? You 
have the intellect of a phonograph ! 

{Shouting in her ear as she strides away from him.) 

Rigamarole ! Rigamarole ! 

Clora 

(Stopping abruptly and facing him.) 

I see the reality of things. I see it — now ! I am to 
be nothing to you — worse than nothing ! But you 
— you are already husband ! Rigamarole ? 

(She laughs bitterly, hysterically.) 

Love? Inlovel There 's a hoodoo on me. What- 
ever I touch becomes husband — husband — HUS- 
BAND! 

(She throws herself in the chair and leans on the table?) 

In every word you say I hear the voice of Tony 
Wayne ! 



208 HUSBAND [act hi 

Iffley 
Wayne — Wayne ! Always Tony Wayne ! 

Clora 
You do him the honor of being jealous — him ! 

Iffley 

And you ? Why did you forbid me to speak of 
him ? I know a man when I see one. 

( With deep shame .) 

I — like him ! I have done him the wrong he never 
would have done — never could have. He is a man, 
and I . . . As you say, I am a blackguard. 

Clora 
Then it is all of! between us ! 

Iffley 
{Shinned ; pleading.) 

Clorinda ! It can 7 be off ! 

Clora 
And why not ? 



act in] HUSBAND 209 

Iffley 

You forget our love. And how would you live — 
with no one ! I know him. He never will stand for 
the thing we have done. Come in any way you 
please — but come you must. 

Clora 
You think you have me in your power ! 

Iffley 

As you love me, I have got you in my power. 
And as I love you, by Heaven, I '11 keep you there ! 

Clora 

No, Edmund. I have one little virtue — honesty. 
Free love ! It 's a castle in the air. 

(Looking round at the house and the stars) 

Or rather, a cottage in the sky ! No, Edmund. For 
me as for Sally, it is back to the old life here — to- 
gether. 

Iffley 
You live here — this kennel, this hutch ! 



210 HUSBAND [act m 

Clora 

{Simply) 

Yes, Edmund. This kennel, this hutch. 

{A cough is heard within. Sally appears at the door) 

Sally 
Clora, Tony is coming. 

Clora 
Here ! What does he want ? 

Sally 
I told him you needed him. 
{Coolly?) 
You may not know it ; but you do, you know. 

Clora 
Lord Edmund's uncle and cousin are both dead. 
{Sub-acidly.) 
You might congratulate him. 

Sally 
Oh, I am sorry ! That is, Lord Edmund, 



act in] HUSBAND 211 

(A quizzical smile) 

I 'm glad of your good fortune. May I say so ? 
They were n't your dearest friends ? 

( They go round the corner?) 

{Enter Wayne. He faces Clora, haggard \ heartsick.) 

Wayne 
I am here. 

Clora 

( With forced lightness?) 
How interesting ! So am I. 

Wayne 
Then you don't want me ! I knew it. 

(He turns away.) 

Clora 
Tony ! 

(She starts toward him; he looks over his shoulder.) 

I never dreamed what Sally was doing. 

(He hesitates a moment, then again walks on.) 

But, Tony, now you are here . . . they say you 
are suffering — on account of me. 



212 HUSBAND [act in 

Wayne 

{Facing her.) 

Not on account of you. On account of another 
woman — 

Clora 
(Ironically.) 

Already ! 

Wayne 

On account of the quite imaginary creature that 
for five foolish years I thought you ! 

Clora 

(Dignified, yet with a trace of cajolery!) 

Then you did love me — once? 

Wayne 
Yes, damn you, I did ! 

Clora 
( With arch seriousness!) 

That sounds very ardent. I don't like the way it 
feels. 



act in] HUSBAND 213 

Wayne 
Have n't you tortured me enough ? 

Clora 

It's an old habit — hard to break off, all at once. 
But I do want to tell you — I 'm not going away 
with Lord Iffley. 

Wayne 

( With angry scorn.) 

You have betrayed him too — already ! 

Clora 
No. He has fallen heir to the earldom. 

Wayne 

(Sardonically.) 

I congratulate you. 

Clora 

If you wish. Yet if you don't mind, I won't get the 
divorce. 

Wayne 
(Bitterly.) 

It is he who is leaving you. You want to come 
back? 



214 HUSBAND [act hi 

Clora 
{Deeply hurt.) 

No, Tony, no ! I shall stay here . . . 

Wayne 

{Not heeding.) 

By Heaven ! The woman who lives with me shall 
be my wife ! 

Clora 

Tony! I haven't asked to — to be that woman. 

Wayne 

( With intense bitterness.) 

You — a woman ! Once there were women in this 
land — the wives of strong men, and the mothers. 
The sons they bore tamed the wilderness, framed 
the laws of a great nation. In you and the mil- 
lions like you to-day their spirit is dead. The race 
of Americans has vanished ! 

Clora 
{Ironically) 

It sounds as if you still cared for me — just as 
always ! 



act in] HUSBAND 215 

{Seriously.) 

Are we as bad as that? The world is so full of 
people. 

Wayne 

But not our people ! 

{Pointing to the distance) 

Down there, in dark alleys and filthy holes, the 
future of America is teeming. Even to-day they are 
more American than we are ; they have the cour- 
age to live their own lives freely, fully, in every 
function ! 

Clora 

{A touch of jealous mockery) 

Ah, as I thought. The prolific Levine ! I '11 get the 
divorce if you wish. Oh, I foresee Young America ! 
Little, nosey Tonys, who do so / 

{A flicker of her palm beneath her chin) 

Wayne 

We do well to mock them : they are our con- 
querors. 



2i 6 HUSBAND [act hi 

Clora 
{With arch sarcasm.) 

They are frightfully immoral. They believe in free 
love! 

Wayne 

A few of them profess to. What difference does 
that make ? 

Clora 

It made a difference to the comrades Levine. They 
loved — then laughed and parted. 

Wayne 
Laughed ! 

( Sardonically .) 

When she bade him good-by, he smashed her 
nose and blacked both eyes. She put him on 
BlackwelPs Island. But don't worry ! When he 
comes out, she '11 go back to him. The new mar- 
riage ! Our ideas of marriage change from age 
to age ; but the reality is always the same. Free 
love ! Since Noah and the Ark, men and women 
have talked of it and tried it. We still go in couples. 



act in] HUSBAND 217 

Clora 
You mean that for women the reality is a black eye ! 

Wayne 

In one way or another it comes to that — when 
they are faithless. 

(He turns to go.) 

Clora 
(Half to herself.) 

I have the black eye. But you — you are harder 
than you say that man . . . 

(Wayne pauses ', seeing Sally as she enters.) 

Sally 
Oh, Clora, the worst ! 
(Seeing Wayne.) 

Tony — the light ! It is to the south ! 
(Disconsolate, she throws herself into his arms.) 

Wayne 

(Bravely.) 

Don't take it hard, Sally-sis. I 've known it was 
coming. 



218 HUSBAND [act in 

( Very tenderly?) 

Cheer up, little sister. The nicest thing in the world 
is to have you care ! 

Clora 
( With latent jealousy.) 
I care too, Tony. I do, I do ! 

(Sally looks from one to the other y and steals away, 
round the corner.) 

Wayne 

[Gazing fixedly at Clora?) 
You — care ! 

Clora 

( With deep emotion?) 

Yes // Oh, I do care ! Believe me ! That is why I 
am — am not going. I have brought harm to every 
one — to Sally, even to him — as I brought harm 
to you. Your whole strength was tested — your 
whole life at stake. At least I might have given 
you comfort and rest. But I betrayed you. In my 
selfishness, my vanity, I betrayed you — I ! Tell 
me — you are unhappy alone? 



act in] HUSBAND 219 

Wayne 

I am alone, but not unhappy. The future is still 
mine ! Those people down there — do you know 
when I found my interest in them? When I first 
felt the sin, the futility of our love, yours and 
mine — of our whole life ! The seed of the age to 
come is theirs. I may still help to prepare the land 
for them — to prepare them for this land that once 
was ours. 

Clora 

Yes. The future is yours ! But you are harder, 
more cruel than that man on Black well's Island. 
Let me stand by you, and I will give you peace 
and strength, for years — forever ! — until you 
have won the victory that to-night I have cost you. 
I will be nothing to you ; or, God willing, I will be 
everything you have ever wished — your wife . . . 

( With deep humility!) 

My husband ! 

Wayne 

{Bitterly : mocking.) 

Husband ! I seem to remember that word ! I shall 
be husband no more. I know you as you are ! The 



220 HUSBAND [act in 

gracious American girl — all our lives we Ve been 
taught we 're unworthy of her. She is the heroine 
of the ten-cent magazine, the artistic triumph of 
the yellow printing-press, the ideal of school-girls 
and the envy of shop-girls. She is as deep in vanity 
and waste as she is shallow of heart. She is hand 
in glove with all men — the mate of no man. Go, 
be the mistress of nobility. You are fit for it ! 

( With intense scorn) 

Husband ! 

Clora 

(In utmost sincerity) 

Perhaps I am what you say. Yet, I '11 tell you a 
secret, Tony — a secret against my sex. We pre- 
tend to ourselves we are above such things — the 
things for which we were made. Oh, we pretend 
very well ! But a woman is — a woman. I never 
knew one of us but deep down in her heart she 
was mortally ashamed to be childless. 

{Not heeding her, Wayne walks vigorously to the door) 

{SJie readies her hands toward him and pleads with 
fervor and deep abasement) 

Tony ! I am not accustomed to plead, yet I beg you 



act in] HUSBAND 221 

— remember! By the girl I once was ; by the love 
you once gave me — though I am not worthy of it 

— remember ! 

(Exit Wayne.) 

(Clora stands dazed a moment. Then enter Sally.) 

Sally 
Tony has left you — in anger ! 

Clora 
(Nods absently) 

Yes. 

Sally 

Then you have not sent him away — Lord Iffley. 

Clora 

(Smiling very sadly.) 

He had told you — already ? I have sent him 
away. I know — you said it ! I have made him 
desperately unhappy. But he is young, and a man. 
In the end he will find some true woman. 

Sally 
But with Tony — must it be all over ? 



222 HUSBAND [ACT III 

Clora 

Why not ? I used to think I loved him — more 
than he loved me. I had only a few odd senti- 
ments — weak sentimentalities. I see it — now ! To 
be in love — it is such a little thing. To love — ah, 
that is something ! His life is a passion, an ideal. 
For me there is no place in it. 

{Crying out in bitter self -mockery^ 

Ruin his life ? Everything I have made him suffer 
has raised him above himself ! Ruin any true man? 
It is / who am blackened, corrupted. 

Sally 
Not yet, dear . . . 

Clora 

Not before the world. I could stand that. But in 
my own heart. Oh, sister, what an awakening! 
The things I have lived for — they are not what I 
care for. Deep down in my heart I want . . . 

{She pauses as if searching her hearth) 

Sally 
Tony ; you want Tony. Oh ! I forgot ! 



act in] HUSBAND 223 

Clora 

Tony, yes ! But more than that ! 

{She pauses, gazing blankly into space. Sally slips 
quietly out at the door. Clora does not see that she 
has gone) 

For once in my life I see my whole heart ! . . . 

( Turning slightly away from where Sally has been) 

Don't look at me, Sally-sis! Yet listen. I must say 
it ! . . . All my life I have feared one thing — the 
only thing I have felt to be greater and stronger 
than I — children ! I know I 'm absurd ; but don't 
laugh at me ! If you laughed, I could n't bear it. 
Children — the Children of Heaven . . . they 
have threatened to conquer my life, to make me 
their slave . . . their willing slave ! Soft little 
hands have reached out to me, Sally. Out of the 
mighty past they have reached to me — through 
me to the mightier future ! To them my happiness 
has been nothing — no more than a flower which 
is withered and blown to the winds, that the au- 
tumn may bring harvest. I have feared them, I 
have hated them — wishing to live an eternal 
spring. I have scorned them and scoffed them, 
Sally, till you have thought me hard and hateful. 



224 HUSBAND [act in 

But it was only because in my deepest heart I 
loved them — loved them beyond all the world! 
In day dreams little rosy ringers have brushed my 
cheek ; little golden heads have lain against my 
bosom. At night, in my deepest dreams, longing 
eyes have rebuked me. They have pleaded, oh, so 
sadly pleaded, for life and love! And they have 
pursued me, the Children of Heaven ! They have 
pursued me like bloodhounds, day and night, with- 
out mercy ... to destroy. But their hunger is the 
hunger of eternal love. To-night — 

(A pause) 

I am free for the first time — free of the lifelong 
fear of them. And for the first time I am w r retched. 
Oh, I know now how those people feel who take 
their life in their hands and end it. . . . 

{Her head sinks on her hands, crossed on the tabled) 

Sally 
( Without) 

Thank heaven you had n't gone ! The light ! The 
light ! It may have been all a mistake! 

{Reentering) 

Bless that poky elevator ! The light to the south 



act in] HUSBAND 225 

is out. At the Garden there has been no light. 
Clora, stir yourself ! 

(Clora does not move.) 

{Reenter Wayne ; he sees that the Garden tower is still 

dark.) 

Wayne 
(To Sally.) 

Those fellows over there are my good friends. 
They won't own we 're beaten — not this week. 

(Sally goes to the corner and looks toward the tower of the 
Times. From the Garden tower a flashlight streams 
northward?) 

Sally 

(Rushing to the parapet?) 
Tony, look ! North ! North ! 
(She disappears around the corner?) 

(Clora arouses herself and faces the tower.) 

Wayne 

( Weary and incredulous .) 

They ought n't — they have no right to do that sort 
of thing. 

(Reenter Sally.) 



226 HUSBAND [act hi 

Sally 
Look 1 Here ! 

{Pointing toward the Times.) 

There seems to be a light on the far side of the 
tower — north ! 

(She disappears around the corner and after her Wayne. 
Mechanically Clora follows. ) 

( While the stage is empty, a low roar is heard below 

in the direction of Madison Square. It takes form in 

co7icerted shouting and cheering : " Wayne, Wayne, 

Wayne ! " On the tower the letters blaze forth in 

electric light : Wayne !) 

( Wayne enters hitrriedly and looks over the parapet. 
Then he comes forward, throws himself in a chair 
beside the table and covers his face with his hands, 
his shoulders heaving. Clora enters behind. Not see- 
ing her, Wayne rises to his full height, his face 
ecstatic)) 

Wayne 

{Fervently.) 

I am alone ; but what is left of my life I give to 
my people — to all true sons of America ! 

(Pause. The cheering swells again : " Wayne, Wayne, 
Wayne ! " // is as if tlie whole city in one tumultu- 



act in] HUSBAND 227 

011s roar were acclaiming him. Wayne ; deeply moved, 
and with a gesture almost grotesque?) 

Thank God there are those in this land to whom 
I 'm not husband ! 

Clora 

(Tenderly, maternally.) 

Tony ! Oh, Tony, you great boy baby ! You infant 
absurdity ! 

( With a sad dawning of her old sense of humor, site 
half mimics his gesture?) 

No one wants you to be husband, Tony — not to 
eighty million Americans ! Only to me, Tony. Be 
any sort of a husband, the worst ! Just to me ! 

{Tenderly?) 
My husband ! 

(Enter Muriel and Philip with tin horns and watch- 
men's rattles. Philip grabs Wayne by the hand. 
Muriel throws herself upon his breast.) 

Wayne 

(Embracing her warmly) 
Is n't it great to be elected ! 



228 HUSBAND [act hi 

Philip 
{Puts his arm about Clora and kisses her) 
Gee ! Ain't it great to be crazy ! 

{Reaching into Philip's pockets, Muriel throws hand- 
fids of confetti over Wayne. Philip toots in his 
ears. Mrs. Jones grasps a tickler and sweeps his 
nose. Meanwhile Sally has come round the corner 
and Clora has joined her, leading her down stage.) 

Clora 
{In a lowered voice.) 

Edmund ? 

Sally 

His eyes were full of tears. So I left him. 

Clora 
Help him, do! You understand him? 

Sally 
Yi^s precisely like Alfonso! 
{Sally disappears round the corner.) 

{Mrs. Jones, Muriel and Philip are in animated talk 
near the door. Wayne rejoins Clora near the table.) 



act in] HUSBAND 229 

Wayne 
{Looking at her squarely.) 
Why have you on this old coat — these violets ? 

Clora 
Violets ! 

{She snatches them and throws them on the ground?) 
That 's the end of them ! 

Wayne 

(Softening.) 

And the coat ! It was for me you put them on to- 
night ! You do remember — their mingled per- 
fume! You remembered our first love, up here 
with the stars — together ! 

(He picks up the violets, his face tender with emotion.) 

Clora 

No, stupid, hush ! It was n't that. I don't want you 
to be in love ! Just love me. 

(Snatching the violets t she throws them vigorously over 
the parapet.) 



230 HUSBAND [act hi 

That 's the end of violets ! There 's nothing in 'em. 
Perfume ! 

(From a distance she holds forward the lapel of her coat 
towards his nose.) 

Smell ! 

{Mrs. Jones, beholding them, approaches smiling.) 

Moth-balls, Tony. 

( With mounting excitement) 

No violets for Clora ! Moth-balls and matrimony. 

(A grimace) 

Love 's young dream is o'er ! 

Mrs. Jones 
( Takes each by the hand, but speaks to Clora) 

When husband and wife quarrel, it is always the 
fault of the wife. 

Wayne 

(Smiling) 

How about it, Kate the Curst? 

(Clora instinctively bridles?) 



act in] HUSBAND 231 

Mrs. Jones 

{Taking alarm at Clora, speaks to Wayne.) 

But when they 've made up — it was the husband's 
fault. 

Wayne 

My fault — mine! From to-night I shall have 
no ambition that stands between me and your 
love. 

{A silence. Louder cheering is heard below. A column 
of men is marching up the avenue in lock-step shout- 
ings " Wayne, Way me, Wayne /") 

They are going to the house to congratulate me ! 

{Instinctively turning away from Clora, he looks at his 
watch. Seeing the watch, Mrs. Jones makes a face 
of serio-comic despair?) 

The reporters will want to talk to me. 

{Realizing what he has done, he sheepishly tries to get 
his watch back in his pocket unobserved.) 

But they can wait. 

{He holds out both hands to her.) 

This evening shall be ours alone ! 



232 HUSBAND [act hi 

Mrs. Jones 
Bravo, Tony ! 

Clora 

{Grasping him by the shoulder, takes out the watch) 

No, Tony. Not a moment ! Come ! I 'm your wife. 

{In her old bossing manner.) 

We '11 go home to the reporters together. You are 
tired to death. Your throat needs spraying. 

{She opens his mouth and looks into it.) 

You '11 not do a thing till you 've slept twelve hours. 

{She takes his arm and leads him firmly toward the door.) 

What luck, dear heart, that that poky elevator 
was . . . poky! 

Wayne 
I hadn't rung for it 

(Boyishly confidential}) 

I was coming back to you when Sally called. 

Clora 

And it 's true? You can take me — shamed as I 
am . . . 



act in] HUSBAND 233 

Wayne 
Sweetheart, I love you ! 

Clora 

I have cause to love you. Yes, as never before ! 

( Wayne takes her forcibly in his arms. She still turns 
a shameful face from him.) 

(Philip and Muriel — who have tactfully stood apart 
till now — renew the attack and pursue them out at 
the door, amid showers of confetti.) 

(As they go out, Iffley enters and looks sadly and silently 
after them. Sally follows sympathetically, arid stands 
with her hand against the corner of the cottage. Iffley 
takes out the black-bordered handkercJiief and blows 
his nose. In Sally' s face, a queer little smile breaks 
the sadness?) 

(As the curtain descends, the sound of marching column 
is heard in the distance : " Wayne, Wayne, Wayne /") 

( Wayne 1 s name on the tower winks on and off in time to 
the shouting^ 

THE END 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

a ®ragto? in <©ne 3ct 



PEOPLE IN THE PLAY 

REAL IMAGINED 

The Woman The Son 

The Nurse The Daughter 

The Doctor The Father 

Time : To-day 



Scene : — The library and sitting-room of a city 
house, ricli but simple. The ceiling is supported by 
heavy timbers, resting on carved corbels. The walls 
and windows are hu?ig with crimson brocade. 

The rear wall ranges diagonally with the front of 
the stage. In the centre of it are two windows, over- 
looking the street, the curtains of which are closed, 
hi the side wall, left, is an English Renaissance 
fireplace, the pyramidal hood supported by two sculp- 
tured figures, a youth and a maiden, both in classical 
draperies. A wood fire is burning to embers. Below 
the fireplace is a white marble pedestal upholding the 
portrait bust of a man in the early prime of life, 
the head large and firmly poised upon broad, athletic 
shoulders; the face clean shaven, with features clear- 
cut, sensitive, and handsome. Facing tJie fireplace 
diagonally from above is a chaise-longue with pil- 
lows, and beside it, against the wall, is a carved 
chair of stiff, mediaeval design. TJiere is a door 
down left below the portrait, and down right a draw- 
ing-room table, dimly lighted by a lamp. 

In the easy chair is a woman in the late thirties, 
of a sensitive, psychic cast, but with still the fresh- 
ness and beauty of youth, suggesting the maiden 



238 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

rather than the matron. She is in deepest mourning, 

simple and severe. The light from the fire ; rich and 

softy shines upon her face. 
In the chair beside her is a nurse in cap and apron. 

She is in deep shadow, and at first is scarcely dis- 
cernible. 
Before the rise of the curtain, and for some time after 

it, the Beethoven Funeral March is heard, as if from 

the hall without. 
As the curtain rises, tlie woman is lying back in the 

chair with her head supine, her eyes closed, and her 

features expressionless and set. 
Then, with a start, her eyes open, as if she were 

returning to consciousness, and she sits upright, 

clasping the arms of the chair. 

The Woman 

Have I been asleep ? Oh, how could I ! How could 
you let me ? 

The Nurse 

{Rising out of the gloom and gliding to the chair?) 

Not asleep. Dazed for a moment, perhaps. But 
you needed rest. You have suffered so much. 

The Woman 
But he has gone, and I didn't know it ! 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 239 

(Her features contract to an expression of 'pain , simple 
and large as that of a classical masque.) 

You promised if I stayed here, you would tell 
me . . . 

The Nurse 

Courage a moment, and listen ! There ! They are 
going. 

(A slow, weighted tread, half walk, half shuffle, is 
heard as if from a marble entrance-hall below) 

The Woman 

(Speaking softly, into vacancy.) 

Your friends are with you, dear heart — our friends! 
At least you have a comrade's farewell ! 

(A pause ; then, from the street, the click of opening 
glass doors. The Woman s expression becomes tense. 
A louder click is heard as the doors are closed.) 

The Woman 

( With a low, involuntary cry, rises, and gliding to 
the window, throws back the curtains. A flood of 
sunlight enters, from a snow-white, winter street. 
She covers her eyes with her fingers, and cries :) 

Good-by, my sweetheart, forever good-by ! 



240 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

The Nurse 

{Gliding quickly after her, closes the curtains and, 
supporting her in her arms, leads her back to the 
chair) 

Believe me : I know ! It is better not ! 

(She begins to stroke her forehead, soothingly ; then 
suddenly, iii a professional maimer, feels of cheek 
and forearm.) 

The Woman 

{Catching her hand) 

All the long months he was sick, you were so good 
to him ! I have come to think of you almost as a 
third in our family. 

(The Nurse, shifting her grasp, presses her fingers upon 
the patient's inner wrist, and pauses, while she notes 
the pulse. ) 

The Woman 

(Unconscious of this, speaks excitedly, hectically) 

Do you remember how delirious he was, at first, 
under the shock of the fever ? How he talked to 
my portrait on the wall — what dreadful things he 
said to it, for not taking care of him — so gravely, 
so reasonably ! He never noticed me at the bed- 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 241 

side, never knew the little I was able to do for him 
— and he had always been so clear-headed, so 
kind. I pretended to laugh at it, but it hurt me. In 
all the years we were married, he had never found 
fault with me ! 

The Nurse 

(Still in her professional manner, releasing the 
wrist.) 

I understand. Now you must be still. 

The Woman 

I have been still so long. And when I am still, I 
am thinking — thinking ! If I can talk, is n't it 
better ? 

The Nurse 

(Smiling lightly ', as she shakes down a clinical ther- 
mometer.) 

This is one way to make folks quiet. 

(She places it beneath the Woman s tongue. The Woman, 
with the tube held tight between her lips, smiles 
wryly at the Nurse. The Nurse slips behind her and 
out of the door, and is heard in the hall, calling for 
a number at the telephone. Presently she returns. 



242 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

takes the thermometer, reads the record with an 
averted look of dismay, a7id says :) 

I have some things to do for a moment. Perhaps 
I had better leave you. 

The Woman 

( With a little moan) 

Oh, I can't be left — alone. Not yet ! Did you hear 
what they said — the people in black — as we came 
in through the hall ? 

{The Nurse nods absently) 

They said, "It is harder, so much harder for her. 
A woman who has children is never quite alone." 
I am alone — I have no children. But how — oh, 
how could they say that ! 

The Nurse 

(Grave, yet matter-of-fact.) 

You must be quiet. The Doctor will be here by 
and by. 

The Woman 
( With a start.) 

You mean I have taken the fever — his fever ? 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 243 

The Nurse 
( With assumed confidence.) 

No. It is only that you are worn out. You were 
always careful. 

The Woman 

But toward the end, when all hope was gone, I 
did n't do the things you told me. I did n't 
care. And I don't care. I can't live out my life 

— alone ! 

(The Nurse places a light silk pillow behind her head, 
as she is speaking, loosens her bodice, and shakes out 
the masses of her hair. ) 

The Woman 

I told you he never found fault with me. But there 
was one thing about which he was so much worse. 
Do you think it 's wrong — there are no children? 
I had an excuse. Oh, I did have an excuse ! It 
was my work. From a child I had loved it. Per- 
haps you don't understand what fun it is to make 
beautiful things that are all your own ? My master 

— and he was one of the greatest living sculptors 

— said I had talent, and took me, a mere girl, as 



244 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

his pupil ! Then he wanted to marry me, and I said 
no — until . . . 

{Her voice chokes, and she smiles in pain) 

until he promised there should be no children to 
come between me and my work. 

( The telephone rings, and the Nurse slips into the hall. ) 

Nurse ! Where are you ? 

The Nurse 

{Speaking without, from the telephone.) 

I 'm listening ! I know — you don't need to tell me 
— that you were happy. 

{She pauses, and when the Woman speaks again, goes 
on talking in a low voice without. Scattered words 
are heard. " She is worn out." " Her heart is none 
too strong," etc.) 

The Woman 

At first we were happy. And when you are happy, 
you are so much happier than ever you could have 
imagined! Then I began to notice things — he 
was so strangely interested in all our friends' chil- 
dren. And when I was there, he sometimes looked 
at me so thoughtfully ! I like children, too, but he 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 245 

always seemed to be saying to himself that I 
did n't, that I could n't — that I was something a 
woman ought not to be. You don't have to have 
children, do you, in order to like them ? And don't 
you think every one has a right to be what he cares 
for, what he is ? I could n't help it, that other things 
were more important. He never reproached me — 
never even said a word ! But that only made it 
worse. It was as if he couldn't tell me what he 
thought of me. That seemed disloyal. It hurt me 
beyond bearing. But he said, so tenderly, that he 
had n't meant it so, and reminded me that he had 
given his promise. His promise ! Between those 
who love there is no such thing as a promise. 

{She pauses and listens) 

{ The Nurse is still speaking at the telephone. " Yes ; 
this morning. At once, if you can" etc.) 

The Woman 

Can you hear me ? My pulse beats so loud in my 
temples ! There is n't another soul in the world I 
could tell this to, and be sure she 'd understand. 
You saw him — as he was ! 

{Her voice catches, and she is silent) 



246 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

{The Nurse reenters and stands irresolute behind the 
chair.) 

The Woman 
{Her feverish impulse prevailing. ) 

The figures beside the fireplace, there — do you 
think them pretty ? You see the idea ? The boy is 
Youth, and the girl is Love I — strength and affec- 
tion guarding the fires of home. People have said 
it isn't bad. But I don't care for it any more — 
nor for any of my work. It all seems — you under- 
stand what I mean ! — so much like the work of a 
woman. Except his portrait over there. That is the 
one thing I have done worth while. It is strong — 
alive. It is the dear lad himself — quiet, intelli- 
gent, brave. The eyes — do you think they are 
sad? Some of his friends said they were. But I 
must have seen that look in them, or why should 
I put it there ? 

{She pauses, as if groping with a new idea; theft 
speaks i?i sudde?i surprise and pain.) 

Do you think he looks at me so sadly because 
there is one great thing in which I failed ? It must 
be. That is it ! If I had only known. Perhaps, in 
my heart, I did know ! I tried to justify myself. 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 247 

My work — ! I soon found that, compared to hint, 
I had never really cared for it. Then I told myself 
that the duty toward children — even the love of 
them — would make me less to him. So often I 
have seen just that happen — and with people who 
are fondest of each other. Children come between 
them and make them — different from what they 
were. The love of their youth — their first, best love ! 
— fades and is gone. I was jealous of the mere idea 
of them. You think it strange. But I was — jeal- 
ous! And then — I might have died. Oh, do you 
suppose he thought me only selfish — afraid? 

The Nurse 
( With resolution.) 
Come, dear — to bed. 

The Woman 

I 'm not as ill as that. Only my head aches. To 
bed ! I can't Oh, I can't go there now, ever — 
ever ! 

( With gentle strength, the Nurse tries to raise her and 
lead her to the door. She resists convulsively, and 
shrinks back into the chair.) 



248 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

The Woman 
Not yet ! Not till he too is at rest ! 

The Nurse 

( Wrinkling her forehead prof essionally.) 

The Doctor will be here in a moment. We shall 
do what he says. 

{She takes her post beJiind the chair.) 

The Woman 

{Her fevered strain gradually heightening.) 

Instead of showing me how wrong I was, he made 
fun of me. When I questioned him, he said it would 
be less trouble to have a child and then forget it, as 
other people did. If he had thought me so dreadfully 
wrong, he could n't have spoken like that? But it 
weighed on my mind, and I kept questioning him. 
He made a joke of pretending it had already been 
born — you know how full he was of make-believe 
and nonsense ! Whenever I spoke of it, he asked 
about its clothes. He said they might be cut on the 
bias, but it would be dangerous if they were gored. 

{She laughs, a little hysterically, and the Nurse shows 
alarm) 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 249 

The Woman 

I gave the baby his name : not the name I called him 
by — his real name. By and by he said he wished 
James were a girl. For three years, he said, he had 
liked girls best. We had only been married three 
years. So I invented a girl, and we called her 
my name — my real name, you know, Elizabeth ! 
That was sixteen years ago. We used to talk about 
their toys, their frocks ; of sending them to school 
and college — all that ! You must have noticed 
what fun he was to talk to — how alive and vivid 
he made even nonsense seem. The children were 
almost as real as if they had been born. 

{She is silent a moment, a smile breaking through the 
hectic flush on her face. Then she cries out:) 

Do you suppose they are dead? They were born 
in his heart, and lived there. Did they die too ? 
Am I all alone ? 

{Her body sinks to her knees with a moan, her forehead 
resting on her outstretched wrists}} 

(In the shadowy corner by the mantel, standing close 
beside the sculptured figure of Youth, appears the 
white form of a boy, who closely resembles it. Timidly, 
it floats forward and lays one hand in hers.) 



250 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

The Woman 

( With a convulsive shudder, she speaks as though 
with an effort of will, her face still Jiidden between 
her wrists?) 

You are cold, Nurse. How small your hands are ! 



The Son 

{In a voice wliich, though youthful, is strange, un- 
worldly and sad.) 

It is not the Nurse. 

(He shrinks back into the shadow of the mantel, yet 
still holds a pale hand out to her.) 

The Woman 
(Looks up aghast, and then, in an awed whisper.) 
Is it you ! 

The Son 
Yes ! It is I ! 

The Woman 
(Shrinking, and crying out in alarm.) 
No ! No ! It is not you ! Only my fever makes me 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 251 

think I see you. Go away, please. Do go away ! 
It can't be you. You have never been born ! 

(She turns to the Nurse, her eyes wild and beseeching.) 

You don't see anything — there ! 

The Nurse 

No, dear. There is nothing. Look again. It has 
gone ! 

The Son 

(Standing forth resolutely from the shadow, so that he 
is seen clearly in every line.) 

It is II I who have never been born ! 

(On the other side of the mantel, close beside the figure 
of Love, a girl appears, draped like the sculpture, 
though with curious little alterations that give the 
gown a modern look) 

The Daughter 
And I ! Our father — where is he ? 

The Son 
(Stern, almost accusing) 
Where is our father ? 



252 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

The Woman 
Your father? 

{Sobbing.) 

He is dead ! 

( The children cry out, in a little wail of anguish) 

The Woman 
You loved him ? 

(She sobs, and then, with a strange, sudden smile, al- 
most happy in the thought) 

You loved him, too ? 

The Nurse 

(Shaking her gently by the shoulder, and again trying 
to lead her away.) 

My dear, be comforted. Come ! It is nothing. Only 
your own imagination ! 

The Woman 

(Resisting with convulsive vigor) 

They are his children. They have come to comfort 
me — to be with me, now and always ! 

(Her voice rises, as if in joy) 

They loved him, too / 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 253 

The Son 
(Looking toward the daughter.) 
No ! We did n't love him. 
(Sadly the girl shakes her head.) 

(The Nurse, taking her stand behind the chair, places a 
hand on the Woman s shoulder, and waits, looking 
out of the door anxiously, frorn time to time, for the 
Doctor) 

The Woman 
(Grieved, yet uncomprehending) 
You did n't iove him ? You hated him ? 

The Son 

Don't you understand ? We can't either love or 
hate. All we can do is to 7vant him, and want you. 

The Daughter 
(Lamenting) 

How we wanted you ! 

The Son 

But we 've never been born. And now — now we 
never can be. Oh, Mother! 



254 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

The Woman 
{Startled by the word) 
Yes ! I am your mother ! 

The Son 
{Almost sternly.) 
Why could n't we be ... ? 

The Woman 

( With the excuse of self -accusation.) 

I had my work to do. 

( With a slow glance, she indicates the marbles of the 
mantel, and then the portrait beyond) 

The Son 

{Looks at them, uncomprehending, disdainful) 

Are they why you could n't . . . What good are 
they? 

The Woman 
( Without conviction, yet hurt) 
They were meant to be beautiful. 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 255 

The Son 
Can they walk ? Can they run ? 

The Woman 
{Puzzled.) 
No. 

The Daughter 
Are they warm ? 

The Woman 
No, dear! 
{She smiles with maternal indulgence.) 

The Son 

{Conclusively^) 

Then they are like us. They have never been 
born. 

The Daughter 

{Coming forth eagerly, as she speaks, from the shadow?) 

If they only had been, they might have been very 
beautiful ! How beautiful father was ! And you 



256 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

know, even though I have n't been born, I look 
like him ! 

(Abashed at what she has said, she catches Iter face in 
her hands, and shrinks back into the shadow) 



The Son 

Even we are better than they are ! We can move 
about. Sometimes I pretend I can walk — and 
run ! I almost feel as if I could ! Do you remem- 
ber, mother, when you saw the football clothes in 
the shop-window, and thought of getting them 
for me ? 

The Woman 

Yes, yes! I remember. Would you like to play 
football — you ? 

The Son 
{Proudly.) 

Father played. I might have played too ! At least 
you would have told me all about him. You used 
to talk of us, but you never thought, either of 
you, of talking to us ! He might have told us sto- 
ries ! — About the run he made ; how he plunged 
through the centre, threw off the backs, and ran 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 257 

fifty yards down the field to goal. At the great 
games, they still speak of it. When he struck the 
line, he tore a great hole in the centre of it. I'm 
big as he was at my age, but I can't do it. When 
I strike the line, I go through it, as he did. Only 
nobody knows it. 

(The Woman leans forward with a smile, but when 
she makes as if to speak, she is dumb, and the smile 
freezes on her lips.) 

The Son 
{Eagerly.) 

And then there was the war. Father used to be in 
the Squadron ; and once, when you saw it march- 
ing to the train, you wondered how you would 
feel if I were going with them. I was there! I 
marched all the way ! That is — 

(With the manner of scrupulous truth) 

I went with them. And I did all I could to help 
them. But it was nothing. I could n't march. I 
could n't fight. If I could even have died, it would n't 
matter so much that I 've never been born. 

(The Woman makes as if to cry out ; but no sound 
comes, and her smile changes to a contortion, almost 
a grin, of pain?) 



258 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

The Daughter 

( Who has come diffidently forward while the son was 
speakiiig. ) 

And there was the doll at the bazaar. I might 
have loved it so hard. It 's name was Jemimah. 

The Woman 

(A cry, almost of happiness, breaking from her.) 

I remember it. I remember ! It looked as if its name 
was Jemimah! 

The Daughter 

And then the gowns — such pretty gowns you 've 
imagined for me. 

{Her shyness vanishes. She comes forward, stoops, and 
taking her draperies in her fingers, holds them du- 
biously forth.) 

Do you think this looks like a party gown ? I'd 
rather have it a riding-habit. I should have liked 
horses better than dancing. But you know it had 
to be white. 

The Woman 
( With affectionate simulation.) 
It's as lovely a party gown as ever I saw! 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 259 

The Daughter 
(Still dubious.) 

I was afraid it might still look as if it were only to 
sleep in — in the grave. 

(Her face slowly lighting with happiness?) 

Is it really a party gown ? 

(She smiles joyously, and floats quite out to her 
mother s knee.) 

The Woman 
My daughter ! Oh, my daughter ! 

(She clutches the slender figure in her arms.) 

How soft you are, and cool — restful, comforting! 
There never was anything half so sweet. 

The Daughter 

( Whispering eagerly into her ear.) 

And you don't think my gown would seem strange 
to Mr. Rowland Blake ? It is n't such a queer gown? 

The Woman 
(Mystified.) 

Mr. Rowland Blake? 



260 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

The Daughter 

His father, you know, is one of the men who just 
now took away our father. 

The Woman 
You mean Roley ! 

The Daughter 

I should n't dare call him that. But if I had been 
born, he would have let me love him. I was meant 
to be his. That is why he has always been so shy 
— and does such dreadful things. You mustn't 
blame him. He has no mother, you know — and 
not even me to love him. Often I am with him. 
But he can't see. Do you think I might ask him 
not to be bad — for me ? Are you sure he would n't 
think this such a queer gown ? 

( The Woman lays her face on her daughter s neck, and 
sobs freely, with abundant tears.) 

The Son 
{Coming forward also, and holding her hand.) 
It's the same with me. I should have loved Jack. 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 261 

The Woman 



(Again mystified.) 
Jack? 



The Son 



Jacqueline Convers ! Her father, too, has gone 
with ours. She was meant for me. But I had to 
stand by and let her marry Pinkering. Of all the 
fellows — think of it — Pinkering! I tried so hard 
to tell her she was mine. But I could n't ! And 
already, when she is alone — except that I am 
there — she sobs all day, just as you are sobbing. 
And now it 's too late for me ever . . . 

The Woman 
Oh, my son ! My daughter ! 

The Son 

Often we hoped — when father whispered to you 
— held you so warm in his arms . . . 

The Woman 

(Releasing them, and covering her ears with her palms.) 

Don't, don't ! You don't know what you are say- 
ing ! But it is true. Yes ! Even as I loved him, I 



262 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

hated you, was jealous of you — of our children 
whom the world needs so much, who have so 
much need of the world ! Always he knew that. 
And always it came between our love I 

(She starts forward, gazing in contrition at the sculp- 
tured portrait?) 

(The children shrink back from her) 

(As she gazes, the form of her husband appears, stand- 
ing close beside the portrait, and like it, looks at her 
gravely, austerely.) 

The Woman 
Jeemie, ah, sweetheart! Don't look at me so ! 

The Father 

(Turns from her, and reaches out Ids hands to the 
children, his face still grave, yet lighting with in- 
ward happiness?) 

You can come to me now — at last ! 

The Woman 

Me, sweetheart! Oh, come to me! Don't turn 
against me now ! Be good to me ! If you can't 
love me any more, just be good to me. 



* THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 263 

The Father 
(Not heeding her.) 

My son ! My daughter ! 

The Daughter 
(Lowers her eyes.) 

No ! Not now ! 

The Son 

(Shakes his head, and half lifts a forbidding palm.) 

You should have been our father ! 

The Father 
(Surprised, yet pleading tenderly) 
'Lis'beth ! 

The Woman 
No, no ! That is my name ! 
(Freezing) 
Her name is Elizabeth. 

The Father 
(Still unheeding, turns, pleading to the son.) 
Jeemie — come ! 



264 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

The Woman 

( With a cry of pain.) 

You, you are Jeemie, my Jeemie, my sweetheart, 
my comrade ! Oh, come to me ! Comfort me ! 

{An outburst of jealousy) 

They ? They are nothing ! They have never been 
born ! 

{The Father bends his eyes on her, stern and accusing, 
but says nothing.) 

The Woman 

{In a sudden revulsion, an access of contrition, slips 
from the Nurse, throws herself forward, and kneels 
on the floor.) 

Forgive me — oh, forgive me ! I won't be jealous 
any more. Give them our own dear names — give 
them everything. Give them all our love ! Yet — 
be good to me. If you will only be kind ! 

{The Father remai?zs immovable. She turns to the 
children.) 

My son, my daughter ! Go to him ! Love him ! 
You don't understand. It was my fault — all mine ! 
But don't, don't make him hate me ! 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 265 

(The Nurse has come forward and now sits on the foot 
of the chair, and holds her firmly, a hand on each 
shoulder.) 

The Woman 

(A smile spreading upon her hectic cheeks, at once ten- 
der and full of guile.) 

The stories, you remember, my son, about football, 
and the things that happened in the Squadron ! 
He will tell you ! Once he was shot by a striker, 
and then they met in the hospital, and became 
friends i It is such an amusing story, and so dear ! 

The Father 
(Moving toward his son.) 
Come to me, lad. 

The Son 

(Shrinking from him.) 

That was when you were among the living. Now 
you are only a ghost, like us. And you were born ! 

The Woman 

(In her struggle against her pain, the look of inward 
guile has grown deeper. She turns to her daughter.) 



266 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

He and Roley were the dearest friends ! He can 
tell you all about him. You were made to be com- 
rades, you and your father ! He loves you so . . 

{She struggles a moment against jealousy, and then, 
conquering) 

so that I give him to you. Love him ! Be good to 
him — even if you take him away from me ! 

The Daughter 
( Wistfully) 

It might have been. 

The Son 
( With an air of forbidding dignity) 
But now he is dead. 

The Daughter 
{Disconsolate) 

And we . . . we can . . . never . . . 

{The children float back into the shadows of the mantel) 



The Son 
{Sadly) 

Never . . . never ... for all time. 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 267 

The Daughter 
( With a little wail.) 
Forever . . . forever . . . 

The Son 
Always, to eternity . . . 

( They disappear, but can still be heard, repeating the 
words "Never . . .forever" ; their voices, now 
waxing, now waning, become distant.) 

The Children 
( With a last shrinking cry.) 
Eternity is cold . . . Oh ! Cold 1 
[They are heard no more.) 

The Father 

(No longer sad, only austere and accusing.) 

You reproached them — you / — that they have 
never been born ! 

The Woman 
(In an agony.) 
I am in sin — in shame ! But that is why I need 



268 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

you — need you as never before ! All your life you 
knew my sin ; yet you shielded me, forgetting your 
own dearest wish — shielded me from knowing it 
was sin. Help me now ! 

The Father 

Shielded you! You knew it — always knew it. 
There was never a day, not an hour, that you did 
not fight with your heart to kill the sense of your 
shame. 

The Woman 

Yes, yes. It is true ! But it was because I loved 
you so much. Our life — it was you who used to 
say it — was all beauty, all passion and tenderness. 
Oh, how can you torture me ? 

The Father 

Yes! You loved me — so much that you killed 
our love. 

The Woman 

But it was you, dear, it was you I loved. Look 1 

{She points to the sculpture beside him.) 

This is our child. I made it. In this you live for- 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 269 

ever, forever young and beautiful — and I live 
with you ! 

The Father 

It was in this that you killed me, and killed your- 
self. 

The Woman 

Oh, I dorit understand ! 

The Father 

You never understood. You thought we loved — 
were happy. Our love was sterile, vain. You 
were a thief in happiness. You stole the flower of 
life, and blighted the fruit. Your country gave 
you its best — beauty, strength, love. You took it 
all, and gave your country no return. You have 
killed us both. You are dead forever, as I am. 

The Woman 

{Crying out in agony.) 

Dead ! Oh, if I only were, I might go with you — 
love you still. I am alive, and all alone ! Only be 
good to me ! I know you don't love me — can't 
ever love me. Yet you were always kind. Look at 
me kindly, sweetheart — once, only once, before 



270 THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 

you go. Give me one little word to take me down 
to the grave ! 

(The Father moves backward from her toward the 
marble image. His body gives forth a strange light, 
as if the effulgence of strength and purity, but his 
eyes are still austere, accusing.) 

The Woman 

Your eyes, dear ! Don't look at me so t 

{The eyes do not change) 

Oh, where shall I go away from them ? Your lips, 
my sweetheart ! Your lips are still mine ! 

(With convulsive strength, she leaps from the grasp of 
the Nurse, and throws herself towards him. But in 
the instant the light vanishes, and he is gone. She 
embraces the marble.) 

Your lips are cold. Stone cold — as they were in 
the coffin ! 

(She titters a cry of horror. Her knees give way, but 
she still clings to the sculptured portrait. It totters 
and falls. The marble shatters on the hearthstone.) 

(The Nurse quickly kneels beside her) 

( The Doctor, who has just entered, stands horrified, 
then hastens forward) 



THE FORBIDDEN GUESTS 271 

The Doctor 
She is delirious? 

The Nurse 
{Stripping open her bodice.) 
Quick ! Her heart is failing. 

The Doctor 

{Kneels and applies an instrument. ) 

She is dead. 

{Both stand apart from the body in horror.) 

(The crash of the marble has broken apart the embers. 
Their dying fires light up the form of the Woman, 
lying amid fragments of the portrait.) 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



NOV "" 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



i 



